A long war look at A/P Stan
Monday, August 24, 2009
(H/T Mrs. G) Here is a very good sign that we have the right people running the war in A/P Stan.
Gen. David H. Petraeus plans to open an in-house intelligence organization at U.S. Central Command this week that will train military officers, covert agents and analysts who agree to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan for up to a decade.
The organization, to be called the Center for Afghanistan Pakistan Excellence, will be led by Derek Harvey, a retired colonel in the Defense Intelligence Agency who became one of the Gen. Petraeus' most trusted analysts during the 2007-08 counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq.
I don't trust the opinion of anyone who thinks we can finish what we started in A/P Stan in anything other than a decade. And even then we will have forces there to support and keep a eye on the place. It is the home to too many groups that share the jihadist mentality and left to fester we know what they end up doing. It takes a serious area focus in an area of fractured, tribal society to even start knowing the players and formulating the plays. This focus on building a group that can achieve that is vital to any chance of creating a stable (ish) situation.