Word: agha
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...solution has grown, meanwhile, on both sides of the divide. Robert Malley, a negotiator on President Clinton's team at Camp David and who later gave advice to candidate Obama, has written a thoughtful assessment of the declining prospects for the two-state solution, along with Palestinian academic Hussein Agha, a longtime adviser to the Palestinian leadership. They point out that right now, the two-state concept has stronger support abroad than it does among Israelis and Palestinians, both of whom have always seen it, even in the best of times, as a bitter compromise that the balance of forces...
Malley and Agha have some blunt advice for Obama. Achieving success "won't be done by repackaging the peace process of years past. It won't be done by strengthening those leaders viewed by their own people as at best weak, incompetent and feckless, at worst irresponsible, careless and reckless. It won't be done by perpetuating the bogus and unhelpful distinction between extremists and moderates, by isolating the former, reaching out to the latter, and ending up disconnected from the region's most relevant actors. It won't be done by trying to perform better what was performed before...
...perhaps best embodies Tehran's posture in Afghanistan: monolithic walls of gray concrete are lined with a series of oversized flags in red, green and white, at once insular and proud. "Look at the way they try to stand out, even compared to the government ministries here," says Shir Agha Malikey, a Herat resident who fled to Iran during the Afghan civil war. "They are not trying to hide their strength...
...Taliban. His administration is notoriously corrupt, dependent on the support of unsavory warlords - some of whom are no more inclined to allow girls to go to school than is the Taliban - and may possibly even be in league with drug traffickers. And yet, this week's news that Gul Agha Sherzai, seen by many Western diplomats as a favored challenger to Karzai, had chosen not to stand in the August election seems to confirm that Washington has little alternative but to live with Karzai. (See a multimedia view of U.S. operations in Afghanistan...
...potential solutions elsewhere in the country. "The Obama visit is what started it all," says Nasir Ahmad, one of Sherzai's advisers and a childhood friend. "Early in his presidential campaign Obama said that the Karzai administration was weak. Then he came to Jalalabad, and discussed with Gul Agha the smooth running of the province and his many successes, so [Sherzai] thought maybe he could do the same for the whole country, not just his province...