U.S., Taliban Not Ready For Afghanistan Peace Talks
U.S., Taliban Not Ready For Afghanistan Peace Talks
WASHINGTON -- As the Afghan wars 10th fighting season gets underway, both U.S.-led troops and Taliban insurgents are battered and bloodied. Military and civilian casualties are piling up on both sides. But prospects for peace talks seem remote, and international diplomats and others say any actual settlement is years away.
And yet, conditions for negotiations seem to have been reached: Neither the Taliban nor the United States has demonstrated the ability to conclusively defeat the enemy on the battlefield, and neither has been able to provide Afghans across the country with honest, effective government.
On the ground, American and Afghan combat units have made some advances, but in many districts insurgents remain dangerously active. Official Afghan corruption is pandemic, and efforts to jump-start local economies and governments are lagging.
After a decade of fighting, 50 percent of Afghanistans key population centers are reasonably safe, Gen. David Petraeus, the top coalition commander, said last month. But two of those reasonably safe cities -- Mazar-e Sharif and Kunduz, both in the north -- recently erupted in lethal violence.
Veteran diplomats and some senior military officers concede the war is a stalemate.
If the stalemate continues, and if past trends hold, this years combat could result in more than 750 American troops killed and over 12,000 wounded. In the first 60 days of this year, the number of American wounded increased 20 percent over the same period a year ago. The war has already taken the lives of 2,402 U.S. and allied troops. More than 10,000 Americans have come home wounded, many of whom will require lifetime care. Almost 9,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the past four years alone.
In the U.S., what has become known to some as President Obamas War is increasingly unpopular. Even some conservative Republicans, perhaps spurred by the $5 billion per month cost of the war, are turning against it.
U.S., Taliban Not Ready For Afghanistan Peace Talks