Reductio ad absurdum

"Pundita, [Re February 10 Pundita post, Amrullah Saleh on Afghanistan's neglected majority] please explain what majority [Amrullah] refers to, in terms other than a poll. I'm not an A'stan vet, I'm an Iraq vet, but I don't see any government or country worth mentioning. My counsel is GTFO ['Get the fuck out']; if we must return it is as Jackson not Wilson. Do I have it wrong?
B Doran"

B Doran:
I'm not clear on exactly what you mean by your question about Afghanistan's majority. So this might not be the kind of answer you're looking for, but for the record:

You don't have to take the word of pollsters to be assured that the majority of Afghans don't want Taliban to have a say in running the country. All you need do is note that the majority of Afghans insist that Pakistan controls the Afghan Taliban, and stack this against the persistent efforts of NATO and Pakistan's military to discredit the widely held belief. I can't recall offhand whether NATO spokesmen have ever specifically referred to the belief as 'paranoid' but they've consistently and clearly implied that's the case, as has Pakistan's military.

"The Afghans see us behind every rock," said one Pak brass -- or maybe he said "every tree," but the point is that Afghans do see Pakistanis behind every rock and tree. So whether or not these sightings are imaginary, the majority of Afghans believe that Pakistan has been using the Afghan Taliban to wreak mayhem on their country with the aim of controlling it.

Ergo, the majority of Afghans, to include the Afghan Pashtun, don't want the Taliban to have a say, if for no other reason than the belief that Afghan Taliban are Rawalpindi's puppets. NATO and its various member regimes should remember that, the next time they argue that most Pashtuns sympathize with the Taliban.

They should recall the same point whenever they field the argument that NATO can't win the war in Afghanistan because historically Afghans have never stop fighting foreign occupiers in their country. I'm not sure this view of Afghanistan's history is entirely correct. But following the logic of the argument, we're left to conclude that Afghans will never stop fighting Pakistan's occupation of their country, real or imagined as the case may be.

I think I completely understand the second part of your question, which I'll answer in the next post. I'll sign off by posing you a question. If Pakistan does indeed occupy Afghanistan via Taliban proxies, then who are the true insurgents?