NATO and US forces are supposed to be helping to stabilize and reconsruct post-conflict Afghanistan. But this effort is scuttled every time the Taliban sets off an IED or explodes a suicide bomb to drive out the foreign forces. Would it help Afghanistan if foreign forces weren't there in the first place?

Afghanistan's President Karzai seems to recognize that the conflict between foreign forces and the resurgent Taliban may be a stumbling block to an organic Afghan solution to stabilizing the country.

In light of this, he began offering to negotiate with the Taliban at the beginning of 2007, an offer he has repeated intermittently since. In May, 2007, the Afghan Senate also called for talks with Afghan Taliban (distinguished from Pakistan's Taliban). At the same time, they called for a timetable for NATO withdrawal be prepared as soon as Afghan security could function independently.

The Catch-22 is all too obvious: how can the Afghan army and police reach any state of readiness, so that foreign troops can leave, when the foreign troops who are there to train the army keep being targeted for attack by the Taliban? The Afghan Army is itself a target: it lost tens of army and police members in attacks in September, 2007.

Foreign Troop Presence is a Regional Issue

The issue of foreign troops is not confined to the Afghan domestic arena. As Tarique Niazi, writing in Foreign Policy in Focus, explains, Pakistan, China and Russia all have an strategic interests in eliminating NATO's presence from Afghanistan.

Pakistan wants to see foreign troops leave, as their presence has increased its archrival India's influence with Kabul while diminishing its own. If foreign troops depart from Afghanistan, the 35,000-strong Afghan National Army will be hard put to hold back the Taliban. Absent external forces, they are bound to reclaim Kabul, and with it restore Islamabad's traditional strategic advantage.

The 'strategic advantage' to which Niazi refers is Pakistan's privileged relationship with the Taliban. As US intelligence reports of the 1990s (which were classified until August 2007) reveal, Pakistan provided direct support to the Taliban in that period. One intelligence cable amplifies:

For Pakistan, a Taliban-based government in Kabul would be as good as it can get in Afghanistan . . . . the Pakistanis also assume a Taliban-based government would be favorable to them and their goals in Central Asia, especially given the Taliban's attitudes towards Russia, Iran and—significantly—India [which Pakistan has a long-running territorial dispute with in Kashmir] … Many Pakistanis claim they detest the Taliban brand of Islam, nothing that it might infect Pakistan, but this is apparently a problem for another day.

In this historical light, the August 2007 jirga (council) convened by a a group of Pakistani and Afghan tribal leaders to consider the possibilities of dialogue with the Taliban takes on a rather different cast, as does their desire to use Islamic forces, rather than NATO forces, to continue Afghanistan's reconstruction. This recommendation has also found an audience, as Niazi explains:

At a still larger scale, China and Russia are also getting impatient with the foreign presence in Afghanistan. In 2005, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China and Russia as members, asked that the United States and NATO give a timetable for withdrawal of their forces. The Jirga's call for replacing NATO-U.S. troops with Islamic forces resonates in these larger circles.

Strong Local Institutions are the Route to Stability

It is in the light of the complex relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, as well, that the advice of International Crisis Group's Nick Grono makes sense. Grono argued in the spring of 2007 that building strong local institutions and a foreign military presence, rather than negotiations with the Taliban, are the only route to security in the long term. As Grono explained, "'The international community must be prepared to provide the political cover and courage to the country's leadership to tackle corrupt and discredited powerbrokers rather than the present short-term strategy of simply drawing everyone, no matter how tainted, into the fold, creating a culture of impunity and corruption."

Grono also reminded readers that Taliban propaganda has powerful effect. Like other governments, the Afghan government must learn to respond not with more propaganda, but with measured communications. In the meantime, local institution building under international forces' cover will ultimately create the most solid state possible:

This is foremost a struggle for hearts and minds. The insurgents understand this all too well. They are conducting an effective propaganda campaign, giving television and radio interviews and distributing pamphlets to make themselves appear far more powerful and pervasive than they really are. They routinely exaggerate or lie about the successes of the "mujaheddin of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" against what they describe as the "American Christian kafir terrorists occupation military-led NATO forces". In response the Government and its international allies are too often reactive at best, and frequently make claims that themselves defy credibility.

International forces must stay the distance - another decade at the very least - with increased emphasis on training and equipping Afghan security forces. While the international community can provide the security umbrella, it is ultimately local forces and institutions that will determine success against the insurgents.