{"id":3183,"date":"2009-08-15T18:50:50","date_gmt":"2009-08-15T18:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3183"},"modified":"2009-08-15T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2009-08-15T18:50:50","slug":"another-voice-for-bottom-up-strategy-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3183","title":{"rendered":"Another Voice for Bottom Up Strategy in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Dr. Seth Jones<\/strong> of <strong>RAND.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052970204908604574336402390524212.html\">Going Local: The Key to Afghanistan <\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>It is striking that most Americans who try to learn lessons from Afghanistan&#8217;s recent history turn to the failed military exploits of the British or Soviet Union. Just look at the list of books that many newly deployed soldiers are urged to read, such as Lester Grau&#8217;s &#8220;The Bear Went Over the Mountain&#8221; and Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin&#8217;s &#8220;The Bear Trap,&#8221; which document some of the searing battlefield lessons that contributed to the Soviet defeat. Yet, outside of some anthropologists, few people have bothered to examine Afghanistan&#8217;s stable periods. The lessons are revealing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Musahiban dynasty, which included Zahir Shah, Nadir Shah, and Daoud Khan ruled Afghanistan from 1929 to 1978. It was one of the most stable periods in modern Afghan history, partly because the Musahibans understood the importance of local power. Many U.S. policy makers have not grasped this reality, still clinging to the fantasy that stabilizing Afghanistan requires expanding the central government&#8217;s writ to rural areas.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the rest <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052970204908604574336402390524212.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hat tip <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/smallwarsjournal.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/this-week-at-war\/\">SWJ Blog<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Seth Jones of RAND. Going Local: The Key to Afghanistan It is striking that most Americans who try to learn lessons from Afghanistan&#8217;s recent history turn to the failed military exploits of the British or Soviet Union. Just look at the list of books that many newly deployed soldiers are urged to read, such [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[527,361,20,126,471,51,199,465,39,162,11,10,161,312,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-america","category-coin","category-counterinsurgency","category-cultural-intelligence","category-history","category-insurgency","category-legitimacy","category-military","category-small-wars-journal","category-state-building","category-state-failure","category-swj-blog","category-tribes","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}