Washington Post/ By Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung/ November 23, 2010

The revelation that the man who was flown by British intelligence officials to Kabul, sat down with President Hamid Karzai and paid for his interest was not Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour but an imposter in an elaborate ruse became an embarrassing episode this week in the United States' nearly decade-long war. But it has also demonstrated just how hard it will be to end the conflict through a negotiated settlement with an adversary that has shown remarkable resilience on the battlefield and a cool refusal to engage in talks.

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The New York Times/By ROD NORDLAND/November 21, 2010

In an election so riddled with fraud that 1.3 million votes — about a quarter of the total — have been thrown out, the two men’s scheme was just a minor fraud. But it speaks volumes about the pervasiveness of the corruption surrounding Afghanistan’s elections — and about how little that corruption benefited the powerful, in part because of aggressive policing of the Sept. 18 voting and its aftermath by the Independent Election Commission and the Election Complaints Commission.

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Reuters/By Jonathon Burch/November 21, 2010

In a five-point statement released in response to a NATO summit that wrapped up in Lisbon on Saturday, the Taliban said delaying the withdrawal of foreign troops would only lead to more "tragic events and battles." U.S. President Barack Obama, who is due to review his Afghanistan war strategy next month, has already committed to a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops from July 2011, his counterpart Hamid Karzai saying he wants Afghans in control by 2014

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Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty / By Akbar Ayazi / November 21, 2010

During a recent trip to Afghanistan, everyone was talking about the government’s peace talks with the Taliban and other insurgents. For the past few years, most Afghans have been saying that peace cannot be restored from the barrel of a gun but only by reconciliation with the insurgents and through their reintegration into society. Recently, many NATO politicians and senior generals have been cautiously echoing the same thought. Just this past weekend, the head of the British armed forces, General David Richards, said war with Al-Qaeda is not winnable and the Taliban can be only integrated though education and development. But this consensus leaves unanswered some crucial questions. Why is now the right time for reconciliation and integration? Who exactly should the government reconcile with? And how can this be achieved?

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The age/ By Dan Oakes and Tarin Kowt/ December 20, 2010

MUCH of the billions of dollars in international aid to Afghanistan is ending up in the pockets of the Taliban and fuelling the insurgency, according to a Defence counter-insurgency expert.

Poverty reduction and the building of infrastructure is also counterproductive and is undermining efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan, David Matthews said.

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Dr Matthews, head of the counter-insurgency studies team at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, was presenting a briefing to coalition officials at Australia's main Afghan base at Tarin Kowt, including the overall coalition commander in Oruzgan province, US Colonel Jim Creighton, and Australian commander Lieutenant-Colonel Darren Huxley.

BBC News/ By Quentin Sommerville/ 19 November 2010

Just outside Kabul, the BBC's Quentin Sommerville finds Afghans living under the shadow of Taliban guns, and looking far from ready to manage without foreign help. It is only an hour's drive from Kabul, but the town of Charikar feels like another world. People can easily go about their everyday business. The bazaar is busy and there's plenty to buy. Here they can walk the streets without too much trouble.

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THE BBC NEWS/ 18 November 2010

There are currently about 140,000 foreign military personnel in Afghanistan operating under US and Nato command, supporting Kabul's Western-backed government against a Taliban-led insurgency that has gained strength in recent years. Why did the US decide to send more troops in 2010? After more than three months of deliberation, US President Barack Obama announced a troop surge on 1 December 2009, to bring the total number of US forces in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 by August 2010.

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AFP / By Phil Hazlewood / November 15, 2010

The Taliban high command on Monday ruled out peace talks to bring an end to the bitter, nine-year conflict in Afghanistan and described claims that negotiations were under way as "misleading rumours". A statement attributed to Mullah Omar, the reclusive, one-eyed leader of the Islamist militant group, also dismissed the surge of tens of thousands of coalition troops as ineffective and again predicted defeat for foreign forces.

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The Canadian Press / By Edith M. Lederer / November 15, 2010

Afghanistan urged the U.N. Security Council on Monday to remove additional members of the Taliban from its sanctions blacklist, a move it has sought to promote a political solution to the nine-year Afghan war. Afghanistan's U.N. Ambassador Zahir Tanin said the decision to remove 10 Taliban members from the list earlier this year by the council committee monitoring sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaida "will benefit Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation initiative."

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CBC News / November 15, 2010

A panel charged with investigating cheating and misconduct from Afghanistan's September parliamentary election expects to unseat a number of candidates who were declared winners in preliminary results — but nowhere near the hundreds some had predicted, officials said.

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