Still, if the government's increasingly Byzantine machinery of control and supervision worked as intended, even higher taxes and even higher public spending might be both popular and justified.

ECONOMIST: British public spending

By late last year, uprising leaders said they had no choice but to accept government supervision and enroll the area's men into the Afghan Local Police, a self-defense force that is under the command of the Ministry of Interior in Kabul and mentored by U.S. special-operations forces.

WSJ: Once-Touted Afghan Force Falls on Hard Times

"I don't think the government could ever afford to pay for the type of supervision that's necessary but it could be done by a voluntary organisation such as the Independent Monitoring Board, " he added.

BBC: Home care workers 'not properly vetted'