By any standards, June 18th was a momentous day in the troubled history of Afghanistan. At a ceremony at a military college near Kabul the country's president, Hamid Karzai, and the secretary-general of nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, declared that the Afghan National Security Forces (ansf) were now leading the fight against the Taliban in every part of the country. Soon after, news broke that America was about to start formal peace talks with the insurgency's leadership following its opening of a political office in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Then, within hours, came two reminders of just how difficult the search for a settlement is likely to be.
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