Poor Incentive Analysis

Matthew Yglesias claims that Afghan warlords receive money through 1. what he refers to rather generously as 'aid' and 2. drugs. He uses this to argue that they have no incentive to end the conflict with the Taliban. While I don't think the warlords are great at achieving our goals (or what I think our goals are, they remain tenuous and fuzzy), they have no interest in risking the Taliban winning out. Unlike the Pakistani government, for whom the Taliban remains a viable alternative ally, the warlords were largely driven out of power or killed the last time the Taliban ruled Kabul. I doubt very much that they would take any action to prolong the Taliban's resistance, however, I'm going to go on a limb and guess that where the warlords actually have influence, the Taliban are unable to control. The problem is that there are places (largely Pashtun majority provinces) where this is not the case. The dream in 2002 was that Karzai would be able to secure the support of Pashtuns despite a government largely made up of various ethnic warlords. Clearly that hasn't been the case, but that still provides little support that the warlords are acting in ways that prolong the Taliban insurgency.