What exactly are we doing in Afghanistan?

Another voice questioning what exactly can we do in Disintegrationstan, i.e. Afghanistan: an article by Rory Stewart in the latest London Review of Books. Stewart, former soldier and diplomat knows about nation building, and he knows about Afghans.

… there are no self-evident connections between the key objectives of counter-terrorism, development, democracy/state-building and counter-insurgency. Counter-insurgency is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for state-building... Nor is there any necessary connection between state-formation and terrorism... It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan state. They have no clear picture of this promised ‘state’, and such a thing could come only from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners. Is a centralised state, in any case, an appropriate model for a mountainous country, with strong traditions of local self-government and autonomy, significant ethnic differences, but strong shared moral values? And even were stronger central institutions to emerge, would they assist Western national security objectives? (...) From a narrow (and harsh) US national security perspective, a poor failed state could be easier to handle than a more developed one: Yemen is less threatening than Iran, Somalia than Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan than Pakistan.
Yet the current state-building project, at the heart of our policy, is justified in the most instrumental terms – not as an end in itself but as a means towards counter-terrorism… In pursuit of this objective, Obama has so far committed to building ‘an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000’, and adds that ‘increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed.’ US generals have spoken openly about wanting a combined Afghan army-police-security apparatus of 450,000 soldiers (in a country with a population half the size of Britain’s). Such a force would cost $2 or $3 billion a year to maintain; the annual revenue of the Afghan government is just $600 million. We criticise developing countries for spending 30 per cent of their budget on defence; we are encouraging Afghanistan to spend 500 per cent of its budget.

Stewart has no answer to the question of how we prevent the incubation of terrorists, but he says important things about Afghanistan. His opinion encourages all those who are imaging a change in Afghanistan: less Karzai, less centralism, less islamism, less money from abroad; more local leaders, more federalism, more pluralism, economic freedom and self help and locally directed improvements.
More disintegration, more hope. Let's imagine the future of Afghani more similar to Switzerland's cantons.
From Disintegrationstan to Afghani-land.