Cactus

If I outline how the "Afghans" society has periodically reverted/degenerated to tribal identities, can you reverse-engineer a solution for the current situation?

First and foremost the terrain in the North-East and the South lends itself particularly well to sustaining a fragmented society. It is called the Roh - loosely translated to "The Hills". In the Roh the society has always been fragmented, with evidence as old as the Vedas and the Avestas supporting the claim. Fortunately while the tribes there are a chronic problem, they are not the fatal problem - they always need to coordinate with their bretheren in the highlands and the plains to cause real mischief. Also a fragmented society need not be uncivilized - societies in similar terrain, like say the Swiss/Helvetii in the Alps, have managed to reach some sort of equillibrium; you can learn a lot from their evolution. Do you have the History of the Cantons ready?

The vast majority of the Afghans live in the more gentle highlands of the Central and Southern Afghanistan. The physical terrain there is much more conducive to civilization and culture than the Roh or the Northern steppes. The geo-political terrain, however, is not. The idea of a distinct "Afghan" culture and civilization is relatively new one - just about as old as the United States, but without the benefit of two massive trenches separating from those who would challenge it. In most historic records the "Afghans" are treated as negotiable identities - a buffer zone between the markedly distinct and unnegotiable cultures and civilizations of Iran, Turan (Turkic CAs) and Hindustan (Indian Sub-Continent). The Afghans behaved not much differently to challenge tht point: Even as victors, they often moved off to set-up their empires around Delhi or Tehran. For them, any comfortable place was "home".

Most of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century history of this area was characterized by incessant power-struggle between the Mughals ruling India (Hindustan), their traditional blood-enemies the Uzbeks dominating Central Asia (Turan), and the Shahs of Iran (some Iranians, some Turkics, some even Afghans). All the major powers backed their factions, while the factions themsleves shifted alliances. Those alliances shaped the history of most modern "Afghan Tribes".

{Note: In the mid 1700s an Afghan slave-soldier of the Shah of Persia named Ahmed Shah Abdali/Durrani, taking advantage of the Shah's death to the West (in Iran), crumbling Mughal Empire to the East (in India) and civil war among the Uzbeg Turks to the North (in Turan), forged a kingdom called Afghanistan. Decades later all his enemies finally fell to the British and the Russians, who conveniently left his kingdom as a buffer-zone between their empires. Thus came about "Afghanistan". But millenia old links are hardly severed by one ambitious adventurer, nor are they rotted by neglect of two entirely foreign and transient powers.}

The Afghan tribal identities are not unassilable icons: The very fact that there are big tribes, like the Abdali/Durranis and the Ghilzais, prove that plenty of small tribes have submitted their identities to a larger identity. The Ghilzai, in fact, by the virtue of being nomads often pick up miscellaneous wanderers into their tribal structure almost regularly. The Russians and later Soviets were quite successful in rounding-off the most incompatible edges of the tribal society in the North, to the extent that there is very little tribal (as opposed to ethno-cultural) identification there today.