[The first intelligent thing anyone on team Obama has said about Afghanistan in a long time]
[FWIW, this is the FT's front page lead article]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/30b0c4d8-091f-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html
January 24 2010 Financial Times
McChrystal sees Taliban role By Matthew Green in Kabul
General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, has raised the prospect that his troop surge will lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
Gen McChrystal will urge his allies to renew their commitment to his strategy at a conference in London this week.
General Stanley McChrystal: his remarks reveal the growing faith the US military is placing in the hope that a power-sharing arrangement can end the war
In a Financial Times interview, he acknowledged growing scepticism about the war, but said he was poised to make "very demonstrably positive" progress this year as a result of the arrival of an extra 30,000 US troops.
By using the reinforcements to create an arc of secure territory stretching from the Taliban's southern heartlands to Kabul, Gen McChrystal aims to weaken the insurgency to the point where its leaders would accept some form of settlement with Afghanistan's government.
"As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting," he said. "What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed."
Asked if he would be content to see Taliban leaders in a future government in Kabul, he said: "I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past."
The remarks reveal the growing faith the US military is placing in the hope that a power-sharing arrangement can end the war, a possibility floated in Islamabad last week by Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, when he described the Taliban as part of Afghanistan's "political fabric".
<end excerpt of front page article>
Second article based same interview with the FT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/647edfd0-090f-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html
Rest of this article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/30b0c4d8-091f-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html
Michael