By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website
They say it is not about withdrawal - the word is said to sound weak and to frighten the Afghan and Pakistani governments.
But it looks as if the London conference on Afghanistan is partly about just that, wrapped up in policies about “transferring primacy” to Afghan forces and “talking to the Taliban”.
It is about giving Western public opinion the confidence that there is a strategy not only for fighting the war but also for getting out of it.
And it is about putting pressure on the Afghan government to do more itself - governing better and fighting better.
The “they” who deny it is about withdrawal are officials from Western governments anxious to sell their policy of intervention at a time when public opinion is faltering.
Enticement to peace
This is especially true of the British government, which called this conference. Governments tend only to call such conferences when things are going badly. They do not need to when things are going well.
The conference, the officials say, will have three aims.
The first is to lay out a security plan. This will set up a “reintegration fund” to entice Taliban fighters, mainly locals, away from war into peace.
The problem with this is that it has been talked about before. In December 2007, British officials briefed about it. Little happened.
As for the Taliban leaders, President Karzai has had the UN remove five from a sanctions list banning international travel and freezing funds. They include the former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil. More than 140 names remain on the list however. The president might also announce some sort of council or jurga.
Nobody thinks the Taliban leadership is ready to talk. Quite the reverse.
Also on the security front, the hope is that province by province, and starting as early as the end of this year in quieter regions, military leadership will be handed over from Nato to Afghan forces.
Shifting targets
The process is not supposed to be date-driven but conditions-driven - “end-state not end-date” as the jargon has it.
There is a timetable as well, a transfer within five years if all goes well - if.
The target-driven philosophy that has dominated domestic policy in the UK in recent years is now being deployed on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Targets have been redefined. They are not enemy positions. They are “end-state conditions”.
The second aim of the conference is to encourage better governance and more effective aid.
The third is to persuade Afghanistan’s neighbours to help more. Talks about that have already been going on in Istanbul.
“The Taliban leadership do not have as their principal aim al-Qaeda’s violent global jihadist agenda”
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband
In all this, the link between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, whom the Taliban once protected - the usual justification for the war in Afghanistan - is now being subtly re-assessed.
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "We do not conflate or confuse al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Taliban government in Afghanistan in the 1990s provided a supportive environment for the al-Qaeda senior leadership.
“But the Taliban leadership do not have as their principal aim al-Qaeda’s violent global jihadist agenda. The vast majority of its low- and mid-level fighters are certainly not motivated by it.”
This means there does not have to be an all-out victory. Indeed, like withdrawal, victory is a word not heard.
“The path to the exit door is still likely to be protracted, tortuous, and bloody”
Sir Rodric Braithwaite
Former British ambassador to Moscow
Sceptics remain. Sir Rodric Braithwaite, former British ambassador to Moscow who is writing a book on the Soviet role in Afghanistan, said: "The Americans, and therefore we, are redefining our goals.
"Instead of demonising the Taliban, we now contemplate the possibility that some of them could become part of the solution, an Afghanistan run by the Afghans themselves. That is welcome, the beginning of strategy.
"But it takes two to tango, and the Taliban may believe that they have less to gain by talking to President Karzai and his foreign supporters than by sitting it out until we leave anyhow.
“The path to the exit door is still likely to be protracted, tortuous, and bloody.”
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