Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that he welcomes U.S. President Barack Obama's call to negotiate with some Taliban leaders to reduce violence in the country.
Speaking to a group of women during a speech to commemorate International Women's Day, Karzai said Obama's words were "good news because this has been the stand of the Afghan government."
During an interview he gave on Friday to the New York Times, Obama said it may be possible to reach out to moderates in the Taliban. However, he admitted that circumstances in Afghanistan are more complicated than the challenges facing the U.S. military in Iraq, where U.S. troops have had some success negotiating with militants.
"There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region," Obama said during the interview, which was published Sunday.
In Iraq, U.S. troops were able to convince Sunni Muslim insurgents to co-operate with them after the insurgents became alienated by al Qaeda tactics in the country.
However, Obama cautioned that a strategy that has worked in Iraq may not work in Afghanistan.
"The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex," Obama said. "You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge."
In addition to tribal rivalries, Karzai pointed out in his speech that some Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have joined forces with al Qaeda and likely will not reconcile with U.S. troops or the Afghan government.
However, negotiations should commence, "with those who are afraid to come back to their country, or who feel they have no choice but to stay with the Taliban for various reasons," Karzai said. "They are welcome."
Coalition troops have been battling insurgents in Afghanistan since the conflict began in 2001 and the mission has become increasingly more deadly. Since the conflict began, 661 American soldiers have died, as well as 434 coalition soldiers. Of those casualties, 111 have been Canadian.
Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie said on Sunday that the only hope coalition troops have of beating back a growing insurgency in Afghanistan is to reduce it "to the point of irrelevance."
Speaking on CTV's Question Period, MacKenzie said victory against an insurgency does not come in a traditional form, such as an armistice or a surrender agreement.
"It's not going to be that," MacKenzie said. "But it's going to be reducing the Taliban to irrelevance and you do that by guaranteeing security to the population of Afghanistan. That is the way you wean the less radical elements of the Taliban to come over and join Afghan society."
But MacKenzie said as troop levels stand now, with one coalition soldier for every 653 civilians, there are not enough military personnel on the ground to guarantee security.
Last month, Obama said he would send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan to reinforce the 38,000 already in the country.
While Canada's mission in Afghanistan is scheduled to end in 2011, Obama is expected to appeal to NATO countries to increase troop levels in the country.
But according to Robin Wright of the Woodrow Wilson Institute, polls indicate that most Europeans don't support the idea of deploying more of their soldiers to Afghanistan.
"So this is going to be asking the Europeans for far more than they are going to want to do," Wright said Sunday on Question Period.
Wright also said it is not clear if it there are different factions within the Taliban that will negotiate with coalition troops.
"It's a very good question, whether you can peel off some of the Taliban," Wright said. "In the past there have been factions of the Taliban. That was true when they ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s and there are indications that that may be true today. Whether it's possible to peel them off when they're doing better on the ground than ever before is a real challenge."
With files from The Associated Press
