Global issues: Conflict ~ Afghanistan Update

This Sunday the Independent carried some useful updates on the conflict in Afghanistan and also some comment on possible resolution, with the Taliban’s willingness [or not] to negotiate receiving comment:

The Independent: Afghanistan – behind enemy lines The sound of a propeller engine is audible the moment my fixer and I climb out of the car, causing us new arrivals from Kabul to glance sharply upwards. I have never heard a military drone in action before, and it is entirely invisible in the cold night sky, yet there is no doubt what it is. My first visit to the Taliban since 2007 has only just begun and I am already regretting it. What if the drone is the Hellfire-missile-carrying kind?

The Indpendent: Opinion: The Taliban don’t want to talk until the foreignershave left – James Ferguson

Today’s [Monday] Telegraph’s editorial warns that the aims of Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan remain dangerously unclear. The organisers and participants in the parliamentary poll in Afghanistan knew what they were up against, says the Daily Telegraph in an editorial. The Taliban had threatened to attack candidates, polling stations, election workers and anyone who voted. More than 20 people were killed in the run-up to polling day. Amid such brutality, those who exercised their democratic right are to be congratulated. The Afghan Independent Election Commission has been strengthened since the 2009 presidential ballot but the electoral register remains chaotic and it appears voting was far from clean, even if not as blatantly fraudulent as last year. Against the military resurgence of the Taliban, political progress is agonisingly slow. Hamid Karzai presides over an irremediably corrupt regime. Foreign military misdemeanour and domestic political stagnation are a terrible drag on the American-led efforts to bring representative government. The first can and should be dealt with promptly. To overcome the second will require years of patient nurturing.