As the U.S. and its allies slowly retreat from Afghanistan their newest hope for the white men's cause are some local gangs that they believe are fighting the Taliban.

From an interview with Gen. John Allen, ISAF commander in Afghanistan:

Foreign Policy: I am particularly interested in these uprisings in the east and how you view them. They are in their nascency, but I am told they may be a significant trend down the line. Are we talking "Andar Awakening"?

Gen. John Allen: They're actually calling it the Andar Awakening … to plagiarize our Anbar Awakening.

…
FP: You just returned from the east. Tell me about these uprisings against the Taliban and how you see them.

Allen: They're really an important moment, actually. And I had the conversation with [President Hamid Karzai] this morning. Each, each one is an organic movement. And they're popping up in a lot of different places. We're going to start to plot them on a map — we've actually done it already — but we're going to do some analysis as to, is it tribal? Is it ethnic? What was the particular cause? What is the potential solution?

[Andar district in Ghazni province] is the most conspicuous right now, but there's another really substantial one that's growing in Kamdesh in southern Nuristan. There's one growing in Wardak. There's one growing in Ghor. We've heard of one in Faryab.

And so what we have to do is, as I said to [Karzai] this morning, it's not just about supporting Andar in Ghazni. This is a really important moment for this campaign because the brutality of the Taliban and the desire for local communities to have security has become so, so prominent — as it was in Anbar — that they're willing to take the situation into their own hands to do this.

Isn't that great? Locals standing up to the "brutality" of the Taliban?

But here is the real story from people who are not several command layers away from the ground:

Since the end of Ramadan, it has been Taleban who have dramatically stepped up their campaign and not only in Andar, but also against government and US military targets across Ghazni province. Two notables were targeted in the outskirts of Ghazni city in different attacks within a week in late August. The first, on 24 August, on the Andar uprising’s self-proclaimed leader and a former Ghazni provincial governor, Faizanullah Faizan, failed. He suffered a wound in his leg as a suicide bomber tried to detonate his explosive-laden belt in Pashtunabad in the outskirts of Ghazni city. In the second attack, the chairman of the elected provincial council of Ghazni, Qazi Sahib Shah, an ethnic Hazara from Hezb-e Wahdat, was killed, along with his bodyguard, on the evening of 29 August, also in the outskirts of Ghazni. On the night of 30 August, using insiders in the arbakai, the Taleban raided Saheb Khan village, one of the best known Hezb strongholds during the mujahedin era and one of the first villages which had accommodated the arbakai.

It is a longer story which you can read here and here, but the short version is simply that some groups splintered away from the Taliban, made friend with the government and, after a short while, were either beaten or again changed the sides. In conclusion:

The Taleban’s thwarting of the Gero, Deh Yak and Muqur ‘revolts’ before they had even properly started (as well as the failed attempts to spread the ‘uprising’ inside Andar) suggest that the prospects for spreading Andar-style rebellions, at least in Ghazni province look difficult. The Taleban now understand the plan and are striking back quickly and decisively against any such move.

That General Allen is peddling this "model" as successful when it has already failed tells about all one needs to know about the real state of the Afghanistan campaign.

Like at the height of the war on Iraq the U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have lost it. They do not know what they are up to. They do not understand the country and its people. They do not even know how many bases they have in Afghanistan (500 or 1000 or 1500?) and are despite the pledge that "combat troops" are leaving in 2014 still building more.

It seems that the war on Afghanistan will end like the one on Iraq. Karzai, or whoever is next to bribe himself to the top, will tell the foreigners to leave in the same way the Iraqis have done so. There will be no status of force agreement and without that and without public support for the war within the U.S. electorate the U.S. will leave.

What will follow that ugly part of their history will be up to the Afghans.