[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...513034,00.html

As is known, i am pessimistic about the project of democracy in countries like Afghanistan. However, the article gives some good summary on the current constellation of powers and factors over there.

In the summer of 2006, the British security briefings estimated that there were 1,000 Taliban fighters in the southern Helmand province. Since April 2006, at least 600 fighters have been killed according to estimates by soldiers deployed in the area -- but the enemy front has still not collapsed. The reservoir of religiously inspired cannon fodder in the region seems inexhaustible.

So, are negotiations with the Taliban unavoidable? Should the West accept an Afghan government that includes extremist murderers and enemies of democracy? President Karzai recently proposed just that, even offering Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Mullah Omar direct negotiations -- an offer that was made just hours after the Taliban had perpetrated the most devastating attack in Kabul in years.
The prompt rejection of the offer was hardly a surprise. The real Taliban, with their shuras (councils) in Quetta, Pakistan, and in the ancestral territory of Waziristan, are not prepared to negotiate. The future likewise holds little promise in that regard. Why should they be content with a third of the pie when they could, in the end, have all of it for themselves?

With their war chest filled to the brim with drug money and with strong groups of supporters in both Afghanistan's neighbor states and in the Gulf states, they can still hold out a long time. It is a dangerous mix that feeds international terrorism
(...)
Berlin had dispatched only 42 police instructors to Afghanistan. A hundred times that number is needed. Until recently, the Germans trained future police officers only in Kabul. But the Afghan police forces in the provinces have neither the vehicles nor the gasoline to travel to Kabul in order to attend training courses. Most importantly, no police officer can afford to stay away for weeks or even months from the family he must provide for.
Germany -- the so-called "lead nation" -- has spent €12 million ($17 million) a year on the police program and trained 19,000 policemen in five years. The target for next year is 82,000. Now the German government wants to double the budget for the program.
If the mission in Afghanistan is to succeed, then efforts going far beyond what is currently being discussed need to be made. General McNeill recently told his military colleagues at an exclusive meeting at ISAF's headquarters in Kabul that he needs 160,000 troops in order to make the country safe. His colleagues were astonished -- but he was dead serious.
But more than just additional military force is required. Afghanistan needs thousands of engineers, police instructors, economists and agricultural experts. What is also perhaps needed is recognition that, as unpleasant as that may be, there will be no progress without cooperation with Afghanistan's neighbors: Iran, Russia and also China.