led coalition invaded the country in 2001, all that Zalmay Khalilzad, American ambassador to Kabul from 2003 to 2005, could say was: There has been "localized improvement in certain areas." This was in 2010, nine years after the invasion. Has there been any further improvement during the last five years? The answer is in the negative. Worse still, even the fragile gains, "localized" or otherwise, are in the process of being lost because of a hike in a resurgent Taliban's attacks. According to a UN assessment, 2015 was the worst year yet for civilian casualties. More than 3,500 civilians died last year and 7,457 were injured, exceeding the 2014 total. A quarter of the civilian dead and wounded were children US and allied officials say the Taliban group now controls or heavily influences around a third of country. More important, the militants are extending their reach to previously peaceful areas, notably the northern provinces bordering the Central Asian states, and escalating the war in their southern heartland provinces. In recent months, they have threatened most districts of Helmand, where much of the poppy crop that produces the world's heroin supply is grown. Helmand is not the only province where Taliban have launched several high-profile attacks in recent months. Their capture of the northern city of Kunduz in September — which militants held for three days and fought over for more than two weeks — was enough to shake Afghans' faith in US ability to end the war on its terms. Now the group controls almost all the major roads in the country, which they can shut down when they choose. The attack on Wednesday on the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, was the latest to hit a diplomatic mission or international organization in the city, near the Pakistan border. Several people were killed and more than a dozen injured by the suicide bombing, followed by an hourlong gun battle. In January, Indian Consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif was also attacked by insurgents. Last Monday another Taliban car bomb killed at least 20 police in front of a police building in the capital. Despite a remaining garrison of 9,000 US troops and advisors, American diplomats now travel only by helicopter for meetings, even inside Kabul. The fact is even after US spending more money reconstructing Afghanistan than it did rebuilding Europe at the end of World War II, the country does not have a national government whose writ runs beyond Kabul. So the US has to abandon grandiose hopes of transforming Afghan society for the more modest aim of departing with honor, leaving behind a secure and coherent government. But here again Washington is running into a dead end. If formerly the US was fighting an elusive enemy, now it is seeking a reluctant peace partner. During the past two months, a quadrilateral coordination group which consists of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and China has held four meetings to develop a road map for Afghan peace During his talk at Washington's Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) last week, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistani prime minister's adviser on foreign affairs, indicated that a meeting between Taliban and the Afghan government may take place in the next 10-15 days. But the problem is Taliban's refusal to enter into negotiations so long as foreign troops remain in the country. Only imaginative diplomacy, not military pressure can persuade Taliban to enter talks. Taliban should realize that the US or Western powers will not announce a date for withdrawal of their troops before negotiations start. Taliban can put all their demands on the table once the peace talks starts. The very fact that the US is willing to talk to Taliban should convince the militants that their enemy has realized that Afghanistan has turned out to be a war they do not know how to win.
