The longterm solution for Pakistan is democratic, and is going on right now in the NWFP, reference Arc's article.
It's the first time they have had a provincial government that wasn't a result of the voters not caring (the pro-mushy party gets elected), or after that when the masses become slaves to the mullahs words. They've now elected a less-horrible party. In provincial politics, this is pretty fast development, and for a major region of Taliban activity, incredible. In fact, a naturally-occurring proof of Democracy, Rule of Law, and Pushtu in the same sentence, let alone the same chunk of land is the best thing that could happen to the war in Afghanistan. It would be a shame to ruin it by emboldening those who would oppose it in the name of God, instead of the people.
Yes, I use "wait and see" a lot with conflicts. This is because the asymmetric affair take a lot more time to hash out, then some silly war of boundary lines. Since I talked about Afghanistan last, things have seemed more dire, despite a surged increase of Afghan Soldiers. Still, as this forgotten war is not talked about in most media in any great depth that allows a comprehensive picture of what goes on in English, there's a lot we are missing.
In Iraq though, I am emboldened by my wait-and-see policy. Since that time we talked about the subject, we have a government who is interested in concentrating all combat arms into the hands of sworn government officers and soldiers. This is not happening in Afghanistan. The government is now learning from the lessons of Lebanon before the bad shit actually started happening (as of a couple days ago). Their results are much less than ideal, but this was an Iraqi operation. Furthermore, they are much less American puppets, especially so on the issue of Iran. That is the most pleasing thing I have read in the recent months so far, and little different from what we talked about before. Will this work out in the end? I can't tell you, nor will I hazard a guess. When should this "See" bit happened? I forget the date I told you in private, Thad, a couple months back. But if you can find it, I will still stand by it.
Between the reinforcements in Kandahar province from the Americans, plus the UAE increase in their troops in Afg, and the French (of all people!) the government of Canada decided to keep into Afghanistan, under less optimistic conditions than Iraq right now, up until 2011: You know, the year where we start going everywhere on jetpack and having all of our meals in pill form.
One other thing about Pakistan on the legality front: Multiple nations in Afg including my own have ratified compulsory ICJ jurisdiction. USA would be putting its allies in a tough spot if they attacked a sovereign nation in the same Operational theater as these allies support it in.
Also, seeing as I'm derailing all political threads with war-talk, perhaps we should split this.. you know.. into something like "Secondary Wars".. Or "Tertiary Wars".
