Stop fighting ghosts and creating new ones. The locals can fight or integrate the Taliban much better than anyone else. Launch a $25 billion, 10 year program 'Green Afghanistan'. This money is to be a gift: Not 'debt relief', not 'development credit', not conditioned on 'buy only from originator', not for technical 'license fees'. This money has to be a gift.
Mayor program points of 'Green Afghanistan':
Electricity: Variants of modern energy mills in the 1, 10 and 100 kilowatt class optimized for low-tech production and little maintainance need. With modern stateless (no maintainance) technology hundreds of those community mills can be interconnected locally to form a self sustaining net. Sometimes there will be no wind, but better intermitted electricity than none at all. Add solar when local production of solar panels is feasible.
Build 100 factories to produce such energy mills locally. Use as little import parts/materials as possible. Needed imports, the machinery and transport costs will be payed by the aid program for maybe 5-10 years. Attach basic engineering schools to each factory. After growing experience and the supporting industries, these products can be major Afghan exports ten years from now.
Water: Use windmills/watertowers/solar for pumping. Build small(!) dam projects. Build standardized low tech, biological sewer treatment systems.
Wood: Afghanistan is seriously deforested. Build a countrywide reforestation program with hundreds of tree nurseries and schools for locals to learn to create and tend to the reforestated areas. Concentrate on fighting timber rather than opium smuggling.
Ahh, opium: Best solution, buy it for cheap at the local markets (80% of the export price is margin for the dealers). Use for regular medicine whatever is feasible and discard the rest. Do not enforce eradication. Don't fight smuggling. Offer alternatives. For the last point - do NOT import food but in serious emergencies. When food prices go up, farmers will turn away from growing poppies.
Other important points:
Only local labor and companies to be allowed below the level of engineering. Why are Chinese day laborers and U.S. companies building Afghan roads when unemployment is the Afghan number one problem?
Stop building those big roads between the major foreign troop garrisons. Local roads to local markets are much more important for the economy than super highways.
Let the local sheiks and tribal elder councils run the projects. They will skim off some of the money - so what. Recruit only locals for police/security forces - pay them well.
A note to imperialists:
There are much more profits to be made by skimming off a well grown economy, than a dirt poor one. Give some money to Afghanistan, let it grow for a while and you will reap in good profits. In between - shun your hedge fund managers and google long term profitability.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/02/green-afghanist.html
When I visited Kabul a couple of years ago, one thing I observed and which to me stood out as a "problem" was multinational contingents operating in security and NGOs working with the Afghans were not using Afghan labour or local materials.
For instance, almost all basic stuffs, food, clothing, office paraphernalia, desks, chairs, etc. etc. that were being used were all imported when many of these things could be locally sourced which could generate business and employment for the ordinary Afghans. So much money running in tens of millions of dollars in one go was being spent by nations flying the basic stuffs needed by the more than 40 thousand foreign nationals working there when clearly, some of this money could be spent locally to help jumpstart local businesses.
Perhaps, things in that area have changed since but what I saw then was puzzling and to a certain extent, shocking.
