Kharzi, says Saleh, has lost all confidence that the United States and NATO have the perseverance to see the war through, and he is working in secret back channels to cut a deal with the Taliban.
From Harvard researcher Matt Waldman of the London School of Economics, reported in the London Telegraph, comes the explosive charge that Pakistani Intelligence is now fully collaborating with the Taliban.
On June 16, The New York Times reported that Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai massacre, is operating in Afghanistan, attacking Indian aid workers. Like the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba received early support from Pakistani intelligence.
What is going on in Afghanistan?
It appears that Pakistan, by maintaining ties to the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, wants to ensure that if and when the Americans do depart, as Obama signaled we would begin to do next July, Afghanistan will move into Islamabad's orbit, not New Delhi's.
For the United States and NATO, however, casualties are rising to the highest levels of the war. June is shaping up as the bloodiest month ever.
While Barack Obama has promised a review of U.S. strategy and policy in December, at the present rate, hundreds more young Americans will by then have given up their lives.
For what?
To succeed in creating in Afghanistan a country where the Taliban have been driven permanently from power and there is no chance of al-Qaida's returns, we need a government in Kabul and an Afghan army and police that can follow up U.S. military gains by taking control, protecting the population and providing social reforms.
We don't have that government. We have, instead, a regime that has no confidence we will stay the course and is thus dealing behind our backs with the enemy who is killing our troops.
It is simply not credible that the United States and its NATO allies, some of whom -- like the Dutch -- are pulling out, can prevail in this war in 12 months so America can begin coming home, as Obama has promised, unless Obama is willing to write Afghanistan off.
If he is, he should tell us now and save those Americans lives.
If he is not wiling to see Afghanistan fall, he should tell us what it will take, and how long, to avoid a defeat and win this war.
For saying the U.S. can succeed in the next 12 months in what we have failed to accomplish, at a rising cost in blood and money, for the last eight years, is not credible.