WORKING FOR THE MAN. Naresh at Asia Burning has an interesting post about the Afghan government, pointing out that it seems to understand that its primary responsibility is to its foreign backers, rather than to the Afghan people. This is hardly surprising, given that the Karzai government is utterly dependent on international backing for its military and financial survival. Making foreigners happy is substantially a greater priority than making locals happy, which is hardly a recipe for success. The situation isn't particularly the fault of the Karzai government, but rather a function of the structure of the situation. It manifests itself in incidents like this, in which an Afghan and an Italian citizen were kidnapped by the Taliban. The Italian citizen was ransomed and returned alive; the Afghan wasn't, and was returned sans head. This distinction is not lost on the Taliban, and will undoubtedly inform its future policy.
--Robert Farley
