Afghanistan Falls Away

I was listening to Start the Week this morning and they had Christina Lamb on - she has been reporting from there for almost 20 years. She reports how the situation there is getting worse and not better. One interesting point she made was that the British have been pursuing a strategy of killing senior Taliban commanders, however this 'decapitation' strategy had resulted in the replacement (by death) of commanders who were focused on Afghanistan with new commanders from Pakistan focused on the global jihad. Ooops. Sounds to me like what happened in Chechnya where the killing of moderate commanders by the Russians pushed the command to ever more hardline Muslim jihadists. The Russians have had to use former rebels (combined with massive destruction of the cities) to keep a modicum of control (though I checked the news to see how it is going, and one solider and one fighter killed over the last couple of days, so it is still a low-intensity conflict).

The thought also occurs, that in the jihadist mindset where everything that happens, happens because 'god wills it' - does this mean that they see the collapse of the global economy as god's will? While I don't believe in god at all, from a tactical point of view, the way the insurgents will win is to force the occupying forces to retreat - and one of the ways of doing that is to bankrupt them. For the occupying forces fighting half-way around the world, the most minor things costs a huge amount. Could the empting of the treasuries of the west force them from the fight?
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