The U.S. long anticipated an increase in violence as the winter snow melted, but the weekend assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai underscores the need greater security in the country. Heritage scholars James Phillips and Lisa Curtis wrote earlier this moth:

Coalition efforts in Afghanistan have suffered from a disjointed and poorly coordinated approach among the different NATO contributors and an overall lack of resources to achieve mission objectives. The United States should press its allies for more troops, fewer political restrictions on their use, more economic aid and capacity-building for the Afghan government, and greater military, economic, and diplomatic coor­dination. It is particularly important that the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all coalition forces carry out a unified and integrated strategy and reject separate deals with the Taliban leadership.

Read their whole paper here.