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Sarasota News Leader February 15, 2013 OPINION Page 67 costs. This raises concerns about the sustainability of the ANSF over time. Pledges by the U.S. and its NATO allies to cover the bulk of these costs were made at the Chicago Summit in May 2012. They were influenced, in part, by the projection that the strength of the ANSF would decline from 352,000 in 2013 to 228,500 in 2017. state. There were strong centripetal forces in play: ethnic differences, tribal loyalties and the Sunni/Shia divide. He also understood that in order to maintain power in Kabul, one had to build influence, not authority, in the provinces. Zaher Shah, the last Afghan king (he ruled from 1934 to 1974) understood this principle, as does Hamid Karzai. Future financial contributions toward sustaining the ANSF by foreign donors will be in proportion to its success as a counterinsurgency force. If its units are defeated, desert or defect to the Taliban, then there will be little incentive for the U.S. and its NATO allies to fulfill their funding commitments. If the flow of cash is interrupted (as was the flow of Najibulla���s payments to Dostum), the remaining ANSF forces and the Taliban will likely reach some sort of accommodation with one another independent of the Karzai government, and Afghanistan will revert to its historic patchwork of warlords, tribal rulers and mullahs. Americans seem not to have grasped this concept. As a nation, they reason, Afghanistan should have a federal system that exercises enforceable authority evenly and without exception over the whole of its territory. Within the Afghan context, however, this is a flawed concept. In Afghanistan, political power is based regionally, not centrally. Society is Islamic and organized along tribal lines. Transition to a religion-neutral, interconnected global village has scant appeal for Afghans. So, as we prepare after a dozen years to take our turn in bidding farewell to Kabul, we follow in the footsteps of the Russians, the British and the Persians, to name but three. The Akhromeev perfectly understood that Afghan- foreigners leave; the Afghans remain to settle istan could never function as a unified citizen scores by traditional means. % MEET THE PARENTS By Harriet Cuthbert Contributing Writer COMMENTARY It is not often that people who are 60+ become parents for the first time. I am not talking about grandparents assigned the chore or pleasure of babysitting their children���s children. I am actually talking about my friends who have just become Mom and Dad to a beautiful, dark-haired little sweetheart with enormous brown eyes, who weighed about 2��