Talking to the Taliban\u00a0was the \u201ctalk\u201d of the international conference held today in London on the future of the war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
In attendance was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and others.<\/p>\n
With the war now in its 9th<\/sup> year and the fighting as intense as ever, the US, the UK, and NATO are looking for a way out.<\/p>\n Among the proposals were \u201creintegrating\u201d or \u201creconciling\u201d Taliban fighters, even Taliban leaders using millions of dollars, jobs, and housing.<\/p>\n Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for a grand conference this Spring\u2026even the involvement of Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n “We must reach out to all of our countrymen,” Karzai said, “especially our disenchanted brotehrs who are not a part of Al Qaeda and other terror networks.”<\/p>\n As for the fight itself, host Prime Minister Brown claimed\u00a0the \u201ctide was turning,\u201d that this point marked the beginning of a transfer of security to the provinces for Afghan forces, which he says could reach a total of 300,000 by next year.<\/p>\n “As they become stronger,” he said, “We can hand over to the them the responsibility of tackling extremists and our forces can start to come home.”<\/p>\n Still, many acknowledge Afghan troops are not close to taking over, and that the bulk of the fighting will be carried on by \u201csurging\u201d US forces whose numbers will reach 100,000 this year.<\/p>\n How much will NATO, criticized for not \u201cstepping up\u201d enough in the past, help out?<\/p>\n NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen told Fox News that the approximately 10,000 new non-US troops would match what US Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal had called for<\/p>\n “The US will not stand alone,” he told us.<\/p>\n Promises were also made\u00a0 to clean up the reportedly corrupt government of President Karzai.\u00a0\u00a0 Efforts which have also been made in the past.So much of what was discussed\u00a0 hinges on\u00a0 the government of Hamid Karzai delivering.<\/p>\n Secretary of State Clinton noted that the US would be “monitoring” the fulfillment of the Karzai governance promises.<\/p>\n In the end, the London Conference was as much about domestic politics in the the UK and elsewhere as it was about the Afghan conflict. \u00a0 \u00a0The war according to public opinion polls is unpopular.<\/p>\n The centerpiece of the meeting, talking to the enemy, shows how much participating politicians want to get out of this regional dilemma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Talking to the Taliban\u00a0was the \u201ctalk\u201d of the international conference held today in London on the future of the war in Afghanistan. In attendance was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and others. With the war now in its 9th year and the fighting as intense as ever, the US, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4512,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4512"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}