Although military officials expected resistance from [Nangarhar Governor Gul Agha] Shirzai, they were surprised by the blowback from Afghan officials in Kabul and from the State Department, which had been informed about the effort prior to moving forward. “The big worry was that the pact undermined the central government,” said one U.S. official.

U.S. military officials rejected the notion that branches of the Shinwari were excluded from the deal. “We did it in a very open way. We announced it in front of 130 tribal elders,” George said.

So I have to go back to my original maybe-this-makes-some-sense post from January and concede that it failed, and failed for all the predictable reasons of poor coordination between tribe and governor and U.S. ground commander and State Department and national government; and for insufficient U.S. depth of understanding about tribal politics and internal fissures. You’re still left with the central policy problem the Shinwari deal was meant to address — what do you do when a huge tribe says it wants your money in exchange for flipping against the insurgency — but the default answer really is: don’t play tribal politics. I could load all sorts of caveats onto that, and I’m resisting the temptation right now, but if you need to put something on an index card, the accumulated lessons of history make it Don’t Play Tribal Politics.