Fred Kaplan and David Ignatius have seconded and thirded Fareed Zakaria's idea of bribing the Pashtuns, which I commented on last month. Joshua Foust, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, thinks it's a horrible idea based on a gross misunderstanding of Afghan people:

It didn't work, in part because in Afghanistan the word "tribe" is so ambiguous as to have almost no meaning. Seth Jones tries to use the idea of "tribe" (and a surprisingly backward concept of how power works in rural Afghanistan) to say that all we have to do is support the "tribes, sub-tribes, and clans" of the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan to inspire a native revolt against the Taliban. While he does us the courtesy of listing a few tribes in a few places, he doesn't actually say how knowing tribal grievances can help the U.S. win the war--if we know in one place that water is scarce, and people have divided into rival factions to gain access to that water, and those factions happen to be tribes... how does knowing someone's tribe actually help solve the problem? If you can figure it out, I'm sure ISAF is hiring.

The obsession with "tribe" and our apparently limitless funds for bribing them has its roots in a stereotype of Afghanistan, a false mythography that crowns them peerless warriors driven by xenophobia and locked into rigid cultural norms we'll never understand. The reality is, most Afghans are below-average fighters in a traditional sense: while they may have impressed nineteenth century British soldiers with their jezail marksmanship, today most Afghan marksmen--whethers shooting at us or with us--can't intentionally hit a barn. Similarly, while Afghans zealously guard their homes and communities--kind of like Americans, see?--there is nothing xenophobic or exotic about their zeal. Can you imagine how Americans would react if we had French soldiers patrolling our streets, handcuffing people?

Look, it's clear, as it was in Iraq, that military victories alone won't turn Afghanistan around. And maybe we're just talking semantics. If "bribes" involve providing resources and funds for some of the more remote areas of Afghanistan to rebuild infrastructure and restore some semblance of normal life, then I'm all for it. But both Kaplan and Ignatius acknowledge that bribery is only a short-term solution. Ignatius pulls from the British experience and concludes:

That was a cynical approach and it left Afghanistan a poor, backward country. But it worked adequately, especially compared with the alternative, which was unending bloodshed in a faraway country that refused to be colonized.

I understand wariness about nation building and the need to prioritize the actual security threat in Afghanistan, but I just don't see how the era of the Taliban can end with any real finality if Afghanistan is left as a "poor, backward country." If we're comfortable literally handing out cash to warlords former Taliban, why are we not discussing using that same cash to actually rebuild Afghanistan? I think we'd see a better return on investment.