The leaked NATO report acquired by the BBC shows what so many who stop to think have believed for a long while. The Taliban is the strongest\u00a0indigenous\u00a0force both politically and militarily in Afghanistan. It also confirms that Pakistan plays a key part facing both ways, but no settlement can be achieved without its inclusion in the settlement. In the end it will be Pakistan which\u00a0guarantees\u00a0the outcome, not NATO.<\/p>\n
The fact that talks are now taking place between the Taliban and the Karzai government on neutral ground is good news. Karzai knows the West has had enough. He knows too that his own security forces, with their uncertain loyalties, cannot possibly assure freedom from a Taliban takeover, once NATO leaves. The only option now open to his corrupt regime is to do a deal.<\/p>\n
It would have saved countless lives, both militarily and\u00a0civilian,\u00a0if all this had been understood years ago. There was enough evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The leaked NATO report acquired by the BBC shows what so many who stop to think have believed for a long while. The Taliban is the strongest\u00a0indigenous\u00a0force both politically and militarily in Afghanistan. It also confirms that Pakistan plays a key part facing both ways, but no settlement can be achieved without its inclusion in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4516"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4530,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516\/revisions\/4530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}