Recently, it occurred to me that there is a scenario where the USA could have *won* Afghanistan, if the US had taken more elements from what the British did during the Malayan Insurgency.
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After the invasion, eventually the US set out to win *the hearts and minds* of the Afghan people in the villages.
But Pashtun identity (rural and religious) always saw them as foreign invaders.
That civilian population provided the base for the extremist Taliban to survive and then outlast the occupiers.
During the Malayan Insurgency, the British removed over 10,000 *suspected* insurgents without trial.
Plus the British set up mass internment camps to hold the insurgent-leaning civilian population for years for the following reasons:
1. To deny the insurgents support from a civilian population
2. To move the civilian population away from radical extremism
Of course, if the USA had tried to move millions of Pashtuns into camps, it would technically be in breach of the Geneva Accords.
But given the British (and others) already did this previously, and the US status as the sole global superpower, the USA could ignored human rights.
So one wonders.
Suppose the money funnelled to the Afghan warlords had been spent on camps providing healthcare and non-radical Islamic education, in order to promote a more tolerant and moderate Pashtun population. It would have been an immense social engineering exercise.
But would Afghanistan be better off today?
