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Tim Lister

Over the weekend, the White House point man on Afghanistan stressed the United States was NOT talking with the Taliban. But Richard Holbrooke, a veteran mediator of the wars in the Balkans, chose his words precisely.  "I want to state very clearly that our nation is not involved in any direct contacts with the Taliban," he said at a security conference in Munich, Germany.

The operational word being "direct." There are plenty of back channels for sounding out the Taliban – or at least some of them. The United States has encouraged Saudi Arabia (one of the few states that recognized the Taliban when they were in power) to open a dialog with more moderate members of the Taliban. But the Saudis have their own conditions – the Taliban must disown al Qaeda, which in the form of its Saudi-born mastermind Osama bin Laden has brought the Kingdom so much pain and embarrassment. The UN's special envoy to Afghanistan has also met low-level Taliban representatives in Dubai.

Holbrooke acknowledged this and was comfortable with it. So was British Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth. "We mustn't raise that bar too high in terms of our preparedness to bring people in," he said. "Neither should we wait until there is real victory before we try to reconcile or reintegrate those elements in the insurgency who are prepared to come across."

FULL POST

By Tom Evans
Sr. Writer, AMANPOUR.

(CNN) - The Taliban may have reached the peak of their military achievements in the War in Afghanistan, one of the world's top authorities on the Taliban said Monday.

And that position of relative strength might make them more amenable to talks, Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid said in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

""They can't go much further than where they are now," Rashid said. "They're across the country. They're having shadow governors and shadow government in all the major provinces, but they can't take the cities because of NATO firepower. They can't create a populist movement against the Americans. They tried and failed to do that."

"So in a way," Rashid added, "the Taliban are in a very strong position, which actually might make them more amenable for talks right now."

His comments came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai steps up his efforts to reconcile with Taliban fighters and reintegrate them with Afghan society. In Kabul on Sunday, Karzai said, "The Taliban are welcome to return to their own country and work for peace in order for us to be able then to have the U.S. and other forces have the freedom to go back home."

FULL POST

In Helmand province, CNN's Atia Abawi visits a field where marijuana plants are grown instead of poppies. One farmer says he's growing the drugs out of economic desperation – he says he would grow grapes if they would pay enough.

The AMANPOUR. team's Vlad Duthiers took the questions you submitted about the situation in Afghanistan on our blog, Facebook and Twitter and put them to CNN's Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson:

A cartoon in Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper expresses another kind of skepticism popular in the Arab world.

Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Editor, Mideast Affairs

When President Barack Obama spoke in front of cadets, staff and guests at West Point to lay out his administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan, “an entire Middle East region was paying attention and analyzing his words carefully,” says Asharq Al-Awsat columnist Abdel Rahman al-Rashed.

According to al-Rashed, the biggest threat facing the Middle East today is terrorism. He says Arab governments and ordinary citizens have been waiting for a sign from President Obama since he took office to gauge his level of commitment in fighting terrorism. “Last night we all got our answer and it’s a positive one” said al-Rashed. “We heard a serious U.S. commitment to fight al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” That, he says, is a comforting stance from the U.S. that “will encourage local governments to do their part and fight terrorism in their backyards.”

FULL POST

[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/11/16/vlad.jpg caption="Amanpour Intern, Vladimir Duthiers"]

By Vladimir Duthiers

“War is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death. A road to either safety or to ruin. Hence, it is a matter to be pondered carefully.”

One might think that the above quote came from a recent speech by U.S. President Barack Obama – eloquently providing the public with some insight into the grave deliberations he and his staff are going through concerning the recent developments in Afghanistan.

But you’d be off by 2500 years. FULL POST