Afghans Are Doing It For Themselves

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/22/afghanistan-un-kandahar.html

President Karzai of Afghanistan recently met with leaders of a Taliban-linked insurgent group in order to negotiate with them. This is not random - meetings of this sort have grown increasingly popular, even though foreign troops are currently trying desperately to counter the insurgency. This may indicate that the Afghan people are losing hope in their international allies... or perhaps that they have decided problems can be handled more efficiently by talking to terrorists rather than shooting them.

The insurgent delegation brought to the meeting a 15-point peace plan, which included steps such as the withdrawal of all foreign troops between July 2010 and January 2011, which is a year earlier than US President Obama said he would begin withdrawal from Afghanistan. (Although Karzai will probably be okay with this.) Another step is the removal of Karzai's government in December, to be replaced with a shura (interim government) until elections are held within the year. A third step is the writing of a new constitution; Afghanistan's current constitution was approved in January of 2004, when Karzai was himself head of an interim government.

This meeting could be the beginning of the end of the Afghan War. If negotiations are successful and Karzai reaches an agreement with this group, many more such agreements could be made with terrorist-linked groups, and peace could be attainable.

Worth noting is the last sentence in the CBC article concerning this meeting, noting the death of two 'service members' of NATO. Why is this relevant to this article? I believe it is to spark the thought that many readers seemed already to share: should peace be established, it would seem that Afghanistan is in the same position as they were eight years ago, only with hundreds of foreign soldiers' deaths on their hands.