The pundits are struggling to come up with a concise one liner in order to describe "what" exactly will constitute a "victory" in Afghanistan. It is not a simple question (as history shows), many have tried to conquer Afghanistan, but the place is unable to be conquered, why?

Because there is no future for the bulk of the people there, they have no jobs, no security and no hope for the future. That means that they have nothing to lose. In order to impose control over such people requires brutality of the magnitude of that wielded by the Taliban.

So what would constitute a victory, given that a purely military victory is impossible? I suggest that giving the people what they don't have - social, economic and political security, village by village, town by town, region by region, is the ONLY thing that will work. Give the people who live there reason to believe that there is something better in their future than war or tyranny.

Give the people some reason to engage in the Lockean Contract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract), because I see nowhere on earth where people live closer to Hobbes' Natural State of Man (where 'life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature#Hobbes.27_philosophy) than the reality that exists for the majority of people in Afghanistan. They have no experience of working together to live in harmony and without that, cannot be expected to believe in the possibility.

A purely military victory is out of the question, if it were possible, the USSR would have achieved it. Each part of the society will have to be built from the ground up, it will be a long, long road, but one we cannot afford to avoid traveling, there are no shortcuts. But is the army prepared for this?

We have already stepped off on the wrong foot in trying to impose central government on people who have no real comprehension of what that entails, while consorting with brutish warlords who are little better than the Taliban in the eyes of many who live under their rule.

Simple Custard.

1/ Destroy all poppy fields.
2/ Warn those who re-plant they will be considered the enemy and attacked.
3/ Wait for the poppy growers to resent the West enough to join the Taliban
4/ We then have clearly defined enemies and battle lines

The rest is up to the generals :)

I reckon a victory would be to achieve all the goals they originally set out to achieve.

The most cogent discussion of this that I have read recently has been Sheri Berman's article "From the Sun King to Karzai"

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65984/sheri-berman/from-the-sun-king-to-karzai

It is behind a pay wall, but well worth the entry fee.

A quick overview can also be found here:

http://issuu.com/barnard/docs/magazine-spring2010/15

"Before Louis XIV, France was also beset by ethnic and regional rivalries and violence, and in the absence of a strong central government, power largely rested with the local lords, many of whom controlled their own armies and militias, and who weren't about to surrender their authority easily".

And the words that Obama least wants to hear right now...

"...it won't be easy - or quick"

But I suspect that a combination of coercion and financial inducements - or violence and bribery, if you prefer - is ultimately the only way in which any form of central control will be successfully implemented.

Of course, this essentially requires them to "sort it out for themselves", while the rest of the world stands back and watches with revulsion.

My view right from the start has been that military intervention by foreign powers in Afghanistan was a massive mistake.

But then, I was only looking as far back as the Russians, rather than the Bourbons.

I don't think any kind 'victory' is possible for the invaders in Afghanistan. They should cut their losses, withdraw and leave the Afghans to sort themselves out. It'll be messy, but it's inevitable.

Boaz - you seem to be unaware that poppy production in Afghanistan fell to almost zero when the Taliban were in power. Mind you, that's about the only positive thing to be said for that regime.

Yes, I agree the poppy fields have to go, that is the Taliban's source of funding, so every farmer should be paid whatever the Taliban have agreed to pay and then the fields destroyed.

Trouble with that is, most of our "allies" are the Warlords who gain their funding from poppy production too. It was the fact that the Taliban kept them down that made the Taliban preferable to them as rulers.

What is needed is some reason why the average Afghan would want to participate in rebuilding, obviously, that means that every one of them would want a slice of the pie for themselves and for their children. How this is done will decide whether or not the military intervention is successful... It will only be successful if the average Afghani, the average village and the average Town/City, has something to prefer to the Taliban.

That is NOT the corrupt leadership that flourishes now, but it must be something... Maybe it is not just rebuilding, but training? Also building ties between groups of villages? I don't know. I do know the only real hope of success is through something of this sort, or the minute the army is gone, the toughest gang in town will take back over.

It is encouraging them to TRY something other than the rule of the sword/gun. Granted, implementing the same at gunpoint is always going to be tricky, but I think it is a viable goal all the same. It just depends what the people involved see as the priority, dead fighters or viable communities. If it's the former then the similarity between this engagement and the Vietnam war is inescapable as is the likelihood of ultimate failure (not defeat, failure).