Afghanistan Check Outs

Here layeth a great group of Afghan-related works that you should check out:

• Scott Shane of the New York Times does a quick, yet informative profile of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.  Unfortunately, he’s as influential as ever.
• Staying with the New York Times, Jame Traub has one of the better pieces analyzing Afghanistan’s future and whether or not it is a ‘we must’ or ‘we can’ or ‘should we’ for the United States to shape.
• Sticking with the debate on whether the US should go ‘all in’ or ‘fall back’ in terms of troops and strategy in Afghanistan, Bruce Riedel, who chaired Obama’s first Afghan strategy review, and Michael O’Hanlon make a strong argument that the war should be fought with all resources necessary to win.  In short, going ‘short’ will only lead to failure.  Countering this argument, Malou Innocent and Christopher Preble from the CATO Institute assert that a massive force is the wrong choice in the conflict, which itself may not even be a national security priority.
• Here’s one example of the military’s side of the Afghan strategy debate from military.com.
• Eurasia.net, which always has worthwhile stuff, has an article by Aunohita Mojumdar tackling the viability of the current Afghan constitution, focusing on the issue of devolving the central government even more.
• And in the end….there’s an interview with Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who gives his take on all the recent Afghan-Pakistan going-ons.  No real amazing insights, but still worth checking out, it’s short!