Ollie Makepeace writes from Kabul: We’ve been just told by the International Crisis Group (ICG) that when coalition forces pull out of Afghanistan we should expect a civil war to break out there. Why? Because, says the ICG, the Afghan army and police won’t be able to handle security.
The tribes of this region have spent 5,000 years fighting intruders including the three brutal wars against nineteenth-century British imperialism. Curiously, Afghanistan is a metaphorical graveyard of modern imperial ambitions (Russian and American in particular) yet it has succumbed seemingly inevitably to internecine and tribal bitterness within its own boundaries.
