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Younghusband
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Younghusband

Date

November 4th, 2009

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When to maintain contacts with bad guys

The New York Times has gathered together an impressive round table of wise men and women to discuss the case of Ahmed Wali Karzai, (brother of President Karzai) who has been linked to the drugs trade in Afghanistan and recently was outed as a long-time CIA asset. Ahmed Karzai is a symbol of corruption in Afghanistan, and the CIA’s connection with him undermines America’s nation-building agenda in Afghanistan. So, how to deal with him?

The round table includes many of the usual suspects: Stephen Biddle, Andrew J. Bacevich, Fred Kagan, Vanda Felbab-Brown and Robert D. Kaplan. The round table is still going on so for the Afghan hands out there, keep your tabs on it here.

Comments to this entry

SJPONeill
November 5, 2009
9:52 am
It probably depends how how important the strategic campaign objectives are against how important it is to appear squeaky clean and firmly on the moral high ground - I'd suggest that you can not do both to successfully prosecute a COIN campaign it is almost inevitable that you will have to compromise on some values and principles in order to focus on the big picture...for example note how many former members of Irish revolutionary organisations are now 'respectable political figures...