IRA or Hezbollah Model for Afghanistan?

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO coalition troops in Afghanistan, has endorsed the conditions laid out by Karzai: that insurgents must abandon violence, sever links to terrorists and embrace the Afghan constitution. Yet left vague is whether this permits the Taliban to exercise a Hezbollah-style option. Karzai might be open to allowing the Taliban to control a sub-state within Afghanistan in return for leaving his government intact and in control of other parts of the country. And just as Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed ruler of Afghanistan, rechristened regional militias and warlord armies as official "divisions" of the Afghan army, so, too, Karzai might integrate the Taliban's existing military infrastructure as a "territorial militia" or find some other such formula to legitimize it. Such an arrangement, however, would be anathema to the U.S. government.