Goodnight Afghanistan, good morning Pakistan.

By Arif Rafiq Written liberally in the style of Goodnight Moon. In the great Situation Room there was a high-level discussion and a red-faced Biden and a picture of… Afghanistan once America departs And there were three little principles sitting on chairs And two little deputies And a pair of super-encrypted Blackberries And a little ...

By , president of Vizier Consulting, a political risk advisory firm focused on the Middle East and South Asia.

By Arif Rafiq

By Arif Rafiq

Written liberally in the style of Goodnight Moon.

In the great Situation Room

there was a high-level discussion

and a red-faced Biden

and a picture of…

Afghanistan once America departs

And there were three little principles sitting on chairs

And two little deputies And a pair of super-encrypted Blackberries

And a little toy Predator And a young president

And the specter of a one-eyed mullah and a very tall Arab and a bowl full of opium

And a not-so-quiet old man who was mumbling "counterterrorism"

Goodnight Karzai Goodnight Abdullah

Goodnight nation building 

Goodnight ink-stained index fingers

Goodnight Afghanistan

Good morning Pakistan

Good morning Kayani

Good morning Balochistan Good morning Qilla Abdullah, Pishin, and Quetta Good morning Karachi

Good morning Predator and Reaper drones Good morning assassination squads

Good morning Pakistan National Highway N-25

Good morning semi-managed chaos

Good morning stalemate

Good morning front-loaded withdrawal

Good night Pakistan.

Arif Rafiq is the president of Vizier Consulting, LLC and a regular contributor to the Pakistan Policy Blog.

Arif Rafiq is president of Vizier Consulting, a political risk advisory firm focused on the Middle East and South Asia. Twitter: @arifcrafiq

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