Here's an answer to that question from Patrick Brown, a foreign correspondent since 1980, now living in Beijing.
This is an excerpt from his new(ish) book Butterfly Mind, Anansi, 2008.
Afghanistan is essentially a federation of mutually antagonistic ethnic groups who have fought each other vigorously and often, but are, in one sense, curiously united. Afghans of all groups are unanimous in their view that Afghanistan is one country, they belong to it, and it belongs to them. Conflict is never about separation from Afghanistan; it is about how to divide up power and wealth in a state with national borders everyone agrees on.
This power-sharing is one of the factors that makes outside intervention so perilous. Foreigners, however well-meaning, cannot possibly acquire the intimate understanding they would need to avoid antagonizing some or all of the groups. Eventually, all outsiders have worn out their welcome.
Intervention almost never works out as predicted, and it is almost never executed with sufficient thoroughness and commitment. The decision to intervene, either for humanitarian reasons or because a regime has become intolerable, are often made haphazardly, and the results almost always are disappointing. Those decisions deserve care and attention proportional to the blood and treasure lost when bad decisions are made.
I have been in Afghanistan many times since the Taliban left. I have watched a growing number of foreign nation-builders and peacekeepers lose their lives in the dusty hills of a country that once again produces 90 percent of the world's heroin.
After 9/11, there really was no choice except to intervene in Afghanistan [in Mr. Brown's opinion, ed.], but the estimates of what it would take to create a stable democracy there were optimistic to the point of foolishness.
'Nuff said...
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