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Notes -
It was certainly attempted, early and often.
The issue is it wasn't attempted in any way that had any chance of working. The reason is obvious, effective occupations are always Draconian, at least at the start. You needed parties of Americans on trucks beheading anyone exercising a semblance of backwardness in the spirit of Sir Charles Napier,
This is a just a starting point if you wanted to engage in such a reform. The British never maintained a heavy enough hand for long enough to weed out all the clannishness etc that pervades Indian society. You'd need to govern like an 1850s Brit for 2 decades to start seeing results in Afghanistan. And obviously that was not on the table with GWB and Obama at the helm. They were feckless and obsessed with not offending Muslim sensibilities.
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