Donald Trump’s much-awaited strategy for Afghanistan and the South Asian region, which was reviewed for a final decision at Camp David on Friday and said to be announced ‘shortly’, is as unpredictable as his language. While keeping in view the absolute nature of US administration and the constraints of neoliberalism, this so-called first post-modern US president is unlikely coming with a deconstructive mind to the past ill-coordinated US policies regarding Afghanistan and the region, completely refraining from the culture of trading in chaos and disabilities in the third world. Among other policy considerations on the South Asian region, the Trump Administration is also considering an awful idea of contracting out the war in Afghanistan. It’s after 16 years of US involvement in the process of state-institutions-building and the war against terrorism in Afghanistan, that a mercenary proposal, which reportedly involves 5,500 private military contractors and 90 aircraft, appears as a considerable private sector input to arrangements in US new Afghan strategy to break, accordingly, the stalemate in this war-torn country through a financially cheaper mechanism. A policy shift towards bringing a regional political and diplomatic consensus on protecting Afghanistan’s sovereignty is the only durable solution to the country’s many problems If the Trump administration agrees to ratify the proposal, it could bear unanticipated outcomes for Afghanistan and the region. The regional players, who have developed stakes in the region through the prolonging of bloodshed in Afghanistan and were always unwilling to accept Afghanistan as an independent state, would get a ground to discursively and politically diminish Afghans’ war for their survival as Blackwater’s war for profit. The Jihadi apparatus in Pakistan can easily exploit such a situation for its own nefarious designs in our strategically key region. In the case of privatisation of American security partnership with Afghanistan, the public representation of it could badly weaken Afghans’ morale in their struggle for survival. Most importantly, the privatisation of security could strengthen divisions within Afghan society over the question of Afghanistan’s strategic and security partnership with the international community, especially the future status and legitimacy of the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) between Afghanistan and the United States, and subsequently, it could disrupt the ongoing process of the intra-Afghan reconciliation and functioning of the present national-unity government in Afghanistan. It’s worth mentioning that legal status of the private military firms (PMFs) is the most important issue which the academic studies have focused all over the world. There is also no agency or legislative oversight in the way there might be on traditional militaries. Other than its shareholders, there are no real checks and balances on a PMF. Surely, if a private resolution was preferred by the US administration to its Afghan problem, the first question would be raised on its legality and its relation to the Bilateral Security Agreement. In this regard, Hamid Karzai, former Afghan president and presently one of the most influential public figures, seems started publicly opposing the dual nature of US policies, their apologetic approach to Pakistan’s interference in Afghanistan and the alleged abuses in US-led NATO operations in the country. While opposing the outsourcing of war in Afghanistan to the private security firms, Karzai termed the proposal a ‘blatant violation of Afghan sovereignty and constitution, that will be prolonging and intensifying the bloodshed in Afghanistan’. “On the contrary, the US government should end the violence against the Afghan people and seek peace. I call upon Afghan government to oppose and denounce this anti-Afghanistan project”, emphasized Karzai in his tweets. Even though the state nationalism, nonviolence and democratic ideologies are the dominant trends in today’s Afghan society, the situation is bad in terms of the lack of an influential political front — one of the most serious weaknesses of the state system in Afghanistan. If the Trump administration really seeks to break the stalemate, it should collaborate with the Afghans in strengthening the parliamentary system, political mobilisation and democratic culture in the country. Otherwise, the war in Afghanistan could face a dead end as the war in Iraq. Hence, the privatisation of security must not be an option. The history of the Afghan War (the so-called Jihad) is replete with evidences showing how US and Pakistan cultivated Afghan religious groups as their proxies aimed at collapsing the state institutions and infrastructure in Afghanistan. To set the record straight, Pakistan’s interference in Afghanistan through training and recruiting Afghan Jihadi groups started during the Bhutto era, not with or after the arrival of the Soviet troops to the Western border. In the Post-Cold War context, the US-led neo-liberal security politics has used it as a norm to fail a state, to create a vacuum over there and to fill it with private militias, militants, corporations and NGOs. Afghanistan of 1990s is, however, one of the worst and first victims of that policy. Pakistan’s flawed Afghan policy has played a big destructive role. Truth be told, Pakistan’s security establishment has never disconnected itself from its 40 years old coercive policy of controlling Afghanistan with proxies. In the post 9/11 context, the United States have time and again threatened Pakistan with enormous pressure tactics including cutting-off aids and imposing sanctions but they have so far failed in changing the minds of Pakistani policymakers regarding Afghanistan. A policy shift towards bringing a regional political and diplomatic consensus on protecting Afghanistan’s sovereignty and guaranteeing it internationally against the violations is the only answer to the world’s Afghan question. To conclude, If the international community genuinely feels an unstable Afghanistan is a threat to the global peace, there is a political solution to it. The state in Afghanistan is now a hard reality, and the world should help it getting harder in terms of economy and democratisation. The writer is an anthropologist and a Pashto poet. He tweets @khanzamankakar Published in Daily Times, August 211st 2017.