Pakistan: Now or Never?

Time to think about Afghanistan end-game?

Britain’s commander in Afghanistan has said the war against the Taliban cannot be won and suggested talks with the group might be a way of making progress.

“We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army,” Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said in an interview with the Sunday Times.

“If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this,” he said. “That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

His comments are perhaps not quite as startling as they first appear. NATO commanders and diplomats have been saying for some time that the Taliban insurgency cannot be defeated by military means alone and that negotiations will ultimately be needed to bring an end to the conflict. In some ways, it’s almost stating the obvious since insurgencies are never totally defeated and all sides have to sit down and negotiate at some point.

Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he had made a call for peace to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and had asked Saudi Arabia to help in talks with the group. A senior Taliban commander rejected the call and said the Taliban would not negotiate while there were still foreign troops on Afghan soil.

But despite the rejection, there does seem to be a growing sense that something is going on, and that people on the ground are beginning to think about how eventually to end the war in Afghanistan.

In an article in Canada’s Edmonton Sun, Eric Margolis has no doubts that it is time for Canada to bring its troops home, arguing that the occupation of Afghanistan is not about preventing another 9/11 but rather to secure routes for pipelines bringing Caspian oil and gas from Central Asia to the West.