After the initial US invasion Taliban recognising defeat wanted to talk peace: a formal surrender, the transfer of vehicles and weapons, an end to fighting in Kandahar, all in return for assurances their leaders could be able to return to their villages. That night Obaidullah sent bread for Karzai, in a gesture of conciliation. In retrospect, it was a tantalising opportunity for a smooth post-Taliban transition and, perhaps, a novel political dispensation. But it wasn't to be. Furious after the 9/11 attacks, the US war machine pursued the Taliban hard. Karzai, the new leader, acquiesced. And the Taliban leadership slunk across the border into Pakistan to lick their wounds and plan the resurgence that is racking the country today.

New US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said the US is "within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda". Mr Panetta said that following the killing of Osama Bin Laden, key leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere had been identified and would be targeted.

President Obama will talk about troop numbers in Afghanistan when he makes a prime-time speech from the White House on Wednesday night. But behind his words will be an acute awareness of what $1.3 trillion in spending on two wars in the past decade has meant at home: a ballooning budget deficit and a soaring national debt at a time when the economy is still struggling to get back on its feet.

The US is engaged in talks with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said, in the first high-level confirmation of US involvement. Mr Karzai said that "foreign military and especially the US itself" were involved in peace talks with the group.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Saturday that the United States should stick to its full counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan at least through this year, even as American forces begin a drawdown in July and some in Congress argue that the current mission is too expensive to continue.

Under President Obama, the CIA is barred from holding terrorism detainees in secret prisons. That's the Joint Special Operations Command's job now. The Associated Press' star intelligence reporter, Kimberly Dozier, has a mammoth piece out describing a constellation of 20 detention centers run by the elite unit in Afghanistan. JSOC can keep an insurgent inside them for up to nine weeks for interrogation without either turning him over to the main U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan or obtaining a waiver from either the defense secretary or the president himself to hold him longer, in the hopes of learning Taliban secrets.

Besides well-reported advances in southern provinces, American and NATO forces have also been able to halt or reverse Taliban gains around the capital, Kabul, and even in the north and west of the country, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said Tuesday.

Robert Gates was speaking during an unannounced visit to the Afghan capital Kabul, where he is discussing the future of US involvement in the conflict-torn country. Mr Gates also apologised over the deaths of nine Afghan boys over the weekend in a Nato air strike.