Karzai's swan song

A failed leader of the failed state, President Hamid Karzai appears to be on his way out which is obvious from his frustration and despondency. Since he has decided to stand for re-election next year, he has been pushing for talks with insurgents to renounce links with Al-Qaeda and accept the post-Taliban constitution.
Karzai has demanded at a meeting with a UN Security Council (UNSC) team that the international community should set a 'timeline' for ending military intervention in Afghanistan. Karzai told a delegation from the council that his country needed to know how long the US-led War On Terror was going to be fought in Afghanistan or it would have to seek a political solution to a Taliban-led insurgency.
Earlier, he has been insisting that foreign troops should not be withdrawn, but his dramatic about-face runs counter to the objectives of president-elect Obama who vows to withdraw the US troops from Iraq and put more boots in Afghanistan, which means that the US is in for a long haul. The delegation - which included the US ambassador to the UN, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad - was on a fact-finding mission with security in the country at its weakest since the ouster of the Taliban. The reason is being ascribed to rampant corruption, drug trafficking and loot and plunder by the warlords.
Afghanistan is facing death and destruction for the last three decades; firstly when Soviet forces landed in Afghanistan and the US and the West planned the overt and covert operation against them. Secondly, civil war and now once again people are victims of the War On Terror. One would hope that both sides would come to the negotiating table to bring peace in Afghanistan. According to a press report, Afghan government representatives and former members of the Taliban had met in Saudi Arabia for talks to end the war in Afghanistan. However, Saudi government has denied such reports. The Taliban's spokesman has expressed surprise on the reports. Taliban have taken the stand that they would not enter into negotiations so long as foreign troops remained on Afghan soil. And those involved in talks were not their representatives.