John Bew

After the London conference, it is clear that “talking to the Taliban” will become part of the strategy in Afghanistan. But the conference left a number of important questions about what this means in practice unanswered. Talking to the Taliban is not a new idea. Even though he expelled a British and Irish diplomat for

David Miliband has become the latest to suggest that the Coalition must talk to sections of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The foreign secretary said it was necessary to build “an inclusive political settlement” which included former insurgents who could be persuaded to renounce violence. And he made an increasingly familiar distinction between ”hard-line ideologues”/jihadists and