What concessions must the Allies make in Afghanistan?

The conservative-liberal weekly Elsevier is sceptical about the new US strategy to be presented at the international Afghanistan conference in The Hague: "What worked in Iraq - more American troops and cooperation with radical Muslim groups that had had enough of al-Qaeda - won't necessarily work in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a desert mosaic of fundamentalist, criminal and half-educated warlords. Every one of them hates the 'democratic' and corrupt regime in Kabul. Afghanistan is in many respects a failed state. The Russians, and since 2001 the Americans have tried in vain to bombard the country from its state of feudalism into modern times. … But this inevitably raises the question of what concessions the Allies would have to make. That schools for girls are closed down again? That heroine production is allowed to continue? That farmers' sons are forced to serve in the militia? Deals with the Taliban threaten to undermine the West's credibility."

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