IT is the old chicken and egg question, posed in its most recent incarnation by that Cesare Borgia of Pakistani military dictators, Zia ul-Haq. Which comes first, the nation or the “national army”? And Barack Obama, not to mention a suddenly eloquent Gordon Brown, had better find a convincing answer pretty damned quickly. You can't have an Afghanistan exit strategy if there is no exit (or strategy).

Come back to the Pakistan of the 70s and 80s, when General Zia, having disposed of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had to give his illicit regime the sheen of respectability - which meant transforming the army. It couldn't be the force of yesteryear, the lofty, middle-class voice of Punjabi officers leading faithful Punjabi troops into battle.

Things needed to be broader-based to attract more Pashtun recruits from the North-West Frontier, to shed any leftover Brit officer-class image, to swell ranks from dusty villages and townships. Fatally, too, that force had to speak for Islam.

So everything went to hell on a Peshawar handcart. Afghan refugees in tent cities on the road to the Khyber Pass became the first Taliban. Zia was too devious by half, of course. He changed the whole nature of Pakistan's military might. Which is where today's Kabul comes in. This is the fourth time in its history that somebody has tried to build a national army for Afghanistan.

So, the Afghan army has about 100,000 operational fighters. The Oval Office would like at least to triple that before it calls the boys home. The problem is that, without a respected president and government to call the shots, there can't be a truly national army.

Afghanistan isn't even Iraq. A united national military, able to take the strain of western withdrawal? It's a dream, not a solution.

—The Guardian, London