Behind the foreign secretary's assurances that this will not be a war without end is the admission that defeating the Taliban is not realistic - hence the drive for reconciliation. While political solutions are welcome, many questions remain unanswered. Why would the British and others expect deals with the Taliban and other insurgents to stick? Why would they expect such people, if given positions of power, to respect the rights of Afghans, particularly women?
As Afghanistan's elections draw to a shambolic finale, it is time for President Obama to end his policy review and breathe hope into Afghanistan's bleak landscape.
The young woman from Kandahar sat with me in the office of an independent monitoring group two days before Afghanistan’s August 20th presidential election. Halima had defied her family and threats from neighbors in the tumultuous southern region to work as an election observer and to vote.
When the United States and its allies went to war against the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, "liberating the women of Afghanistan" was often cited as one of the reasons to seek "regime change." More than seven years later, however, the situation for Afghan women remains dire.
Politicians want a way out of this quagmire. So talking to the Taliban is back on the table, a discussion that quickly leads to clumsy distinctions about varieties of Taliban.
President Sarkozy of France has reignited the debate about how Muslim women in Europe should dress by calling for a ban on clothing that, as he puts it, imprisons women and undermines their dignity.
Yesterday it emerged that a senior British army officer, Colonel Owen McNally, had been arrested under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly passing classified information to a human rights worker in Afghanistan. Unnamed sources suggested he had become "close" to the campaigner Rachel Reid. Here, for the first time, she responds to what she says is a "vicious slur"
One of the youngest detainees at Guantánamo Bay, a 23-year-old Afghan named Mohammed Jawad, spent two days in a courtroom here last week as his defense lawyer argued that his case should never go to trial. The attorney, Maj. David Frakt, claimed that his client was repeatedly tortured and abused in U.S. custody, charges that were supported by the testimony of a senior U.S. Army criminal investigator.
If the Bush administration is still good at anything, it's this: distracting its opponents and seizing little victories from what might have been big defeats.
ONE MORNING late last year, Setareh's students found a landmine in their classroom. It was hidden under a bag in the mud-brick building of the first girls school in her rural Afghan village.
Behind the foreign secretary's assurances that this will not be a war without end is the admission that defeating the Taliban is not realistic - hence the drive for reconciliation. While political solutions are welcome, many questions remain unanswered. Why would the British and others expect deals with the Taliban and other insurgents to stick? Why would they expect such people, if given positions of power, to respect the rights of Afghans, particularly women?
As Afghanistan's elections draw to a shambolic finale, it is time for President Obama to end his policy review and breathe hope into Afghanistan's bleak landscape.
The young woman from Kandahar sat with me in the office of an independent monitoring group two days before Afghanistan’s August 20th presidential election. Halima had defied her family and threats from neighbors in the tumultuous southern region to work as an election observer and to vote.
When the United States and its allies went to war against the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, "liberating the women of Afghanistan" was often cited as one of the reasons to seek "regime change." More than seven years later, however, the situation for Afghan women remains dire.
Politicians want a way out of this quagmire. So talking to the Taliban is back on the table, a discussion that quickly leads to clumsy distinctions about varieties of Taliban.
President Sarkozy of France has reignited the debate about how Muslim women in Europe should dress by calling for a ban on clothing that, as he puts it, imprisons women and undermines their dignity.
One of the youngest detainees at Guantánamo Bay, a 23-year-old Afghan named Mohammed Jawad, spent two days in a courtroom here last week as his defense lawyer argued that his case should never go to trial. The attorney, Maj. David Frakt, claimed that his client was repeatedly tortured and abused in U.S. custody, charges that were supported by the testimony of a senior U.S. Army criminal investigator.
If the Bush administration is still good at anything, it's this: distracting its opponents and seizing little victories from what might have been big defeats.
ONE MORNING late last year, Setareh's students found a landmine in their classroom. It was hidden under a bag in the mud-brick building of the first girls school in her rural Afghan village.