Afghanistan: Operation Candlehour Burns

Or, about as brightly as you'd expect it to.

With Operation Candlehour, the US and NATO (or Not Afghan Treaty Organization) intend to take Kandahar, Afghanistan and turn it into condos.  A bold and meritorious idea, but not easy to accomplish in that market as in Marjah.

Candlehour means "light at the end of the tunnel thrown by one candle for one eleventh hour".  Or not very damned much.  Named after several different Vietnam-era strategies, all of which ended with both the tunnel and the city of Saigon being named after some other guy with a scraggly beard who was not Uncle Sam.

If it worked well in Vietnam...  Well, it's worth a shot, anyway.

You may remember Kandahar as the poppy-festooned capital of the Taliban when they were blowing up Buddahs and stoning... well, just about anyone wearing lipstick in repurposed soccer venues. Incredibly, many Kandhardians are whistful for those days of "very serious, tough but fair" government, the current one being failry tough to take very seriously. And, please, watch your wallet.

To set the tone for the operation, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that, under Operation Candlehour there will be no tank tops parading down the streets of Kandahar, which is both good PR and practical disaster planning.  The last tank top parade you saw was the Pride thing at Disney Orlando and that sucker brought on a mess of huricanes.

Operation Candlehour is going to be tricky, as the generals will need a measure Afghan political clearance to advance very far. Before the US and NATO brass can so much as blow up a house, for example, they must consult President and Closeted Talibanista Harmid Karzai.  It seems clear that President Karzai has the de facto power of veto.  But only as to one house, after which whole neighborhoods may wish for that tank top procession instead.

Plans are to flood the area of two million Taliban sympathizers with 10,000 extra troops, primarily looking to help only the good Kandahardians across the street to Iraqi-style democracy.

Kandahardian city police, usually on street duty, have been extensive retrained, mostly in ducking and covering, like there was an atomic bomb coming (see Plan B below).  Most of the provincial courtrooms are overseen by fewer judges than "Dancing With the Stars", which, it turns out, is okay.  The Kandahar jail is already way over the one-prisioner-per-HD-TV rule mandated by American sensibilities.  So, there is no place to put all the soon-to-be-stranded-across-the-street suspects.  Not this side of Waziristan, anway.

The second phase of the plan is to bury Kandahar in smiles, ribbon-cutting-worthy developmen and heart-felt promises of more to come, a strategy that worked so well in, say, Watts or East St. Louis. Trying to find honest pro-Karzai officials to run such projects is harder than getting Lindsay One-Name into court for fifteen minutes worth of "Oh, Je suis désolé, but I just lost it partying, on Wednesday.  And my passport,too."

Ahmed Karzai, Brother-in-Chief in charge of influence-by-EBay, sells access to Harmid for thousands of pounds, like he was a Fergie who can't sing and it's dried poppyade.  Ahmed boasts that he can--and please start the bidding--bring the Candlehour-chastened Talibanista to the table.  The table in question being the one so feebly lit by the tunnel-visioned candle for which all this was named to begin with.

Sure, he can, but he make them stop with the RPG's anytime soon after they get there?

Remain calm.  The Big O has a Plan B just in case Operation Candlehour gets snuffed. Unfortunately, he has to keep the plan a complete secret until Tuesday, after Jack Bauer finishes up on "24".