Forgive me for responding to your reasonable and detailed post this way, but it is the only response it deserves:
Another reader of Zapp Brannigan’s Big Book of War is heard from!
Your basic points are the exact same points—I repeat, THE EXACT SAME POINTS—that we heard in 2006 that “proved” the surge would never work.
Iraq was always the key to a reform effort. Afghanistan was and is a territorial issue that affects the stability of Pakistan, and by extension India because of the Nuke capabilities of both.
Afghanistan was never and will never be worth attempting nation building unless and until the social structure and it's feudal nature has been changed, and the only way that happens is not with money or good intentions, it happens when one group defeats militarily all the others by killing most of them, enslaving the rest or controlling them with a iron fist for decades.
If you look at the former Russian empire, you will see that it is putting it's self back together to a large degree because it was not ready to be broken up.
When we screw with this natural ebb and flow of reform with our version of what a society should be, it always blows up in our faces.
In the end, we realized this in Iraq and we are are letting them reform in their own image of themselves.
In Afghanistan, we realized that a surge or occupation was not going to work as it had in Iraq. The template was not there. The motivation was not there. The education level was not there!
Pakistan, on the other hand is Pashtun to a great degree and can, over time, develop Afghanistan, if we encourage this to happen. They need the farm land in the west and can develop the resources and infrastructure if the wealth is really there.
This lack of land a resources is what keeps them and India at eat others throats for that prime valley on their shared border. I think all this mess with India, Pakistan and other regional issues will be mitigated by just giving Afghanistan to the Paks or at least most of it, and some to the bordering nation states that have settled those areas with their people anyway.
Just break it up and put the UN and British mistakes in the past. Like I said, this is the GAZA of this area. It is not a country.