Barfield on Afghanistan

So my office subscribes to a journal called Current History, and in perusing/swiping the latest issue, I noticed an article by Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield entitled "The Roots of Failure in Afghanistan." I can't link to it because Current History wants me to pay for the article (thanks guys), but I found it very insightful. Barfield identifies four critical failures of the reconstruction and stabilization effort since 2001: (1) the failure to deploy enough troops to secure the country, (2) the imposition of a highly centralized government on a country in which such a system had never worked, (3) the failure to commit sufficient resources to reconstruction, and (4) the assumption that Pakistan would support the US-NATO intervention. Barfield's opinion is that the first and third of these problems are slowly being addressed, and that the others are not. The question of the government is especially interesting in light of presidential elections scheduled for 2009; Barfield outlines a range of possible scenarios which include the unpopular Karzai government stealing the election, losing to a wildcard candidate, or (most hopefully) losing to a broad-based coalition which better represents the interests of the population.

One thing I can link to is the AIAS feature on my friend Noah Coburn, who when not researching his dissertation under Barfield in Istalif can be found tearing it up on the ISAF Frisbee field. What's up Noah!