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The American who could be President of Afghanistan

More British dead in Afghanistan and I suspect we have reached a tipping point.

Because the Afghan war was so much less controversial than the Iraq conflict when it started, deaths there have not made the same impact on the media and public opinion. When someone died in Iraq it was thought to prove someone right and someone else wrong, whereas in Afghanistan the killing just meant they were, you know, dead.

Thankfully this thinking is about to change. We are about, I am sure, to have a big debate about what we do in Afghanistan and, from some, about whether we should be there.

In this debate a central feature will concern President Karzai and his ability to govern.

There are broadly two schools of thought, although it is possible to belong to both of them.

The first is that Hamid Karzai has to go. He is weak and allows too much corruption. He needs to be replaced. A name often mentioned as a successor is that of Zalmay Khalilzad. He has, it is suggested, a real base of support and could get himself elected as President.

One little, little problem. He isn't actually a citizen of Afghanistan.

Khalilzad is the US ambassador to the United Nations. He is, however, an ethnic Pashtun born in Mazari Sharif in northern Afghanistan and he was popular and effective as special envoy and then US ambassador to the country for the four years leading up to the end of 2005.

The theory is that he could renounce his US citizenship, run and win.

The second school of thought says that Karzai himself isn't really the issue. The problem is our failure to create proper state institutions.

Clare Lockhart, in a superb piece in Prospect, argues that we have given all the cash to bureaucratic and disengaged NGOs and starved the government. No chief exective can succeed without an executive to be chief of.

If you haven't heard any of these names or idea, I suggest you get used to them. They are about to become a familiar part of the political landscape.

The burglar alarm you might not want next door

How to solve the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan? More troops? An end to opium farming? Or Hanif Molavizadeh's zany solution?

Take one Kalashnikov, one wooden box and a cell phone. A little bit of remote detonation and hey presto! You have your own makeshift burglar alarm.

The local engineer has been hailed as an innovative inventor. But his next door neighbours aren't quite as convinced:

The 60-year-old inventor says that last month, he forgot to unload the gun while testing the alarm. A bullet broke a window and ricocheted off a neighbor's wall.

Still the mastermind has not been deterred. His next project? A car alarm that emits an electric shock. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Alice Fishburn

NATO's collective action problem

The appeal for more NATO troops in Afghanistan was ignored by most member states yesterday.

Why? Well, according to Chris Dillow, it's a classic collective action problem:

The thing is, biffing the Taleban is a public good. Lots of people would benefit from their defeat, but those who (hopefully) achieve it are unable to stop others enjoying those benefits.

And it's well known that free people will not provide sufficient public goods, because every individual wants to free-ride on the efforts of every other - that's Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action.

With no other way to galvanise governments, he then makes the following suggestion:

Advocates of a world government are usually regarded as cranks. However, if you believe that the west's security will require regular overseas interventions, shouldn't the idea win more followers as it's an obvious way to solve the free-rider problem?

Alice Fishburn

Afghanistan: do the math

Why is Afghanistan proving so tricky for Nato forces? This article from Open Democracy suggests that the answer is simple: blame it on "youth bulges". The argument can be boiled down to this: Young males + no job opportunities = war.

In the coming decades, close to 500,000 Afghani males will reach fighting age each year. Almost all of these young men want to prove themselves in the traditional warrior spirit of their homeland. Since 1945, every Afghan father who has retired from the battlefield has left his unfinished fighting to three or four sons. Almost none of these sons can find a legal job, i.e. in opium-free agriculture or within the army and police units financed with western money. But aid measures continue to provide better food, education, and medical care than ever.

This is a marvellous humanitarian achievement. Yet, no combination could be more explosive. Peace activists promise that the victory over hunger will also bring victory over war, and triumph for democracy. Youth-bulge research, however, shows again and again that when hunger is not an overwhelming issue and jobs remain scarce, the killing starts in earnest. Why? Because humanitarian measures have made millions of sons stronger and better educated. It is easy to multiply rice bowls and textbooks. It is impossible to do the same with careers. Moreover, for bread, people will beg; for positions in society, they will fight. And fighting offers a tempting choice for some 350,000 angry young men out of the half million coming of age every year.

Robbie Millen