Are we all pulling in the same/right direction?

In a recent speech at a NATO/DCAF seminar, the deputy president of the influential International Crisis Group Nick Grono set out to assess the ‘overall security situation in Afghanistan’.   In so doing, he claims that the central problem in Afghanistan is

highly personalised rule, a culture of impunity, and the abuse of large sections of the population on ethnic, regional, tribal, or sectarian grounds.

He goes on further to say that the tactics and strategy of the ‘US and its allies’ has

reinforced this pattern of grievance and impunity in 2001 and 2002 by outsourcing the fighting and stabilisation operations to discredited and largely disempowered warlords and commanders. When they entrenched themselves in their former fiefdoms, they reverted to their old practices of human rights abuse, corruption and drug production, working once again to build their own networks at the expense of central government authority.  The result is festering grievances and an alienated population that often has little faith in its leadership and offers rich pickings for insurgent recruitment.

His argument, of course, begs several obvious, logical questions:

1. Is ‘personalised rule’ the problem?
2. Are the US and its allies compounding the problem?

However, there is a more disturbing subtext here.  The current strategy (if we can call it that) of relying on and empowering local actors (whether we call them warlords, former warlords, or provincial governors) is very much the strategy at the heart of not just Afghanistan, but also Iraq (whether it is the Anbar Awakening or other measures). 

So, how do you conduct a grassroots, locally-sensitive, campaign which is aimed a supporting the direction of the central authority (and one which is not branded as an imperialist occupation) without handing the ‘keys to the kingdom’ to the wrong people?  If one looks at the way in which the UçK/KLA played NATO forces in Kosovo, one can deduce that the snakes in the grass know the grass better than the elephants do (okay, so it is a tortured metaphor–sue me.)  Is the ‘international community’ achieving anything, or merely doing the bidding of the locals?

Perhaps, as has been discussed here before, this should be a clarion call to re-calibrate our expectations.  For example, when Pres. Karrzai refuses to accept a Potenate (with a powers to oversee and ‘guide’ progress in the ‘right direction’) like Paddy Ashdown, does that effectively draw a line beyond which no progress is possible?  Therefore, is it illogical (and foolish) to expect complete resolution of the fundamental problems?  Should one rather merely aspire to ‘the best possible outcome, given the prevailing conditions, restraints, and constraints’?

What does COIN (and, indeed, the overall policy) look like in this light?