Meanwhile in Afghanistan…

Senior Pakistani officials are urging NATO countries to accept the Taliban and negotiate a series of regional peace agreements similar to those that Pakistan has reached in tribal areas along its border with Afghanistan.

Prior to last week's NATO summit in Latvia, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri told foreign ministers from some NATO member nations that the Taliban was winning the war in Afghanistan and that NATO was bound to fail.

"Kasuri is basically asking NATO to surrender and to negotiate with the Taliban," said one Western official who met the minister recently.

British Lt. Gen. David Richards, NATO's force commander in Afghanistan, and Dutch Ambassador Daan Everts spent five days in Islamabad before the summit urging the Pakistani military to do more to rein in the Taliban, but left less than fully satisfied.

Lt. Gen. Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai, governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, said in an interview with Reuters news agency late last month that U.S. and British military actions in Afghanistan were merely feeding a "snowballing" insurgency….

This year has been the bloodiest in an insurgency that has slowly gained strength since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001.

About 3,800 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, including scores killed in suicide attacks, and in operations by foreign forces across the country, according to the government and U.N. estimates.

More from the London Daily Telegraph via Washington Times, here.

Reason covered "the coming warlord war" in Afghanistan here.