“I repeat that the war on terrorism is not inside Afghanistan, as was the case in the past. This war is not in our homes, in our villages, or [winnable by] arresting our people. This war should be pursued inside terrorist sanctuaries and training centers, and they are all outside Afghanistan, as is being proven now.”

My emphasis. That sounds a whole lot like a rejection of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s approach to the war, which he recently explained to The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe as “look[ing] at those parts of the country that are most important — and those typically, in an insurgency, are the population centers.” And sure, there’s a certain amount of expectation among U.S. observers that Karzai will and needs to pander to nationalistic sentiment. But it’s also difficult to spool those comments back should Karzai use them to win on Thursday. His point that there aren’t “terrorist sanctuaries” in Afghanistan anymore has been raised by counterinsurgency and Afghanistan-war critics for the last several weeks. By implication, Karzai is opening up more of a door to reconciling with the Taliban than he has to date — a good overview of that comes in today’s New York Times — by ruling the Afghan-centric organization out of the cohort of legitimate enemies.

There absolutely is and I don’t think it is necessarily not possible with the Taliban. Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with foreign cadre with them. But most we don’t see are deeply ideological or even politically motivated; most are operating for pay; some are under a commander’s charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders.

So I believe there is significant potential to go after what I would call mid- and low-level Taliban fighters and leaders and offer them re-integration into Afghanistan under the constitution.

Notice two things. First, that’s the position adopted by the Afghan government. Second, it doesn’t say a thing about negotiations or ceasefires with the Taliban. The Taliban see little reason to talk to the government since they perceive themselves to be winning. On Monday, a government-announced ceasefire in Baghdis broke down “within hours.” Josh Foust has more on the folly of additional negotiations. Tough as it can be to hear, the incentive structure for the Taliban right now doesn’t favor negotiations; it favors fighting. It’s up to McChrystal to change that dynamic.

That’s not so different than what Afghan ministers and other senior U.S. officials have said about Taliban reconciliation, but those other figures tend to lend support for reconciliation as, at the least, an aspiration. McChrystal appears to be more skeptical in tone, if not entirely in substance.

The thousands of the Taliban who are now frightened into fighting us and their leaders after they surrendered the government to us went back and lived in their villages and their homes. A lot of them were intimidated and pushed away from their villages and homes unduly, wrongly.

They are not enemies of America. They’re not enemies of the rest of the world or of the Afghan people. They’re just countryside folks of a religious tendency that we have in Afghanistan. They’re not ideologically against what we are doing, and we must bring them back in order for us to have peace in this country.

Now, I would not categorize them precisely as moderate and non-moderate. I would characterize them as Afghans and non-Afghans. The Afghan Taliban are welcome.

Now, I would draw a further category here. And in the Afghan Taliban, those who are not with al-Qaida, those who are not part of any terrorist network, those who are not in the pay or grip of a foreign intelligence agency, and those who accept the Afghan constitution and the way of life that the Afghan people have voted for.

That last paragraph reads as if Karzai suddenly remembered that he had just veered way off his own government’s reconciliation course and suddenly jerked the steering wheel to drive back into his lane. Last month, his cabinet ministers told reporters in Washington that only mid-level Taliban commanders were suitable prospects for reconciliation. Senior leadership, unless they accept the Afghan constitution and essentially surrender, are not. Karzai got closer to that at the end, but his Afghan/non-Afghan distinction is entirely novel.

And understandable as well. Karzai’s facing an election this year amid both Afghan and U.S. antipathy. Why not appear like a peacemaker? Further along in the interview Karzai acknowledges that Mullah Omar has resisted every olive branch he’s offered, so it’s possible this is just a bit of cost-free posturing. Still, it’s getting harder to understand the Karzai government’s position on reconciliation.

… the [Karzai government's] mediating group began to contact the Taliban leadership and the heads of the Haqqani network. “We’ve contacted the Haqqanis indirectly,” says one member of the mediation team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They were open to hearing our proposals.”

The mediators drafted a road map for an eventual settlement. In the first stage, the Haqqani network should stop burning schools and targeting reconstruction teams, and the US military should stop house raids and release Haqqani-network prisoners (similar provisions were proposed to the Taliban).

Representatives of the Haqqani network have agreed in principle to the road map as a starting point for negotiations. But the specifics may change as talks proceed.

What spurred the Haqqani network to see an opening?

According to an Afghan senator quoted in the piece, President Obama’s recognition that the conflict doesn’t have a military solution shook loose some interest from the Taliban and the Haqqani network. Yet the road map under discussion calls, at this stage, for restrictions on U.S. military actions leading to ultimate U.S. withdrawal. Would the Obama administration accept that?

According to a knowledgeable source, the United States has three basic conditions for what it can’t accept from the Karzai government in terms of insurgent reconciliation: no al-Qaeda; no separate deals with insurgent groups that leave them in charge of provinces; and no restrictions on military operations. If Gopal’s report is accurate, a roadmap for peace with Haqqani tests the strength of those conditions.

As far as I can tell, Gopal is the first to detail this negotiations process. We’ll see if denials emerge from Haqqani’s people, as was the case earlier this week with the Taliban’s Quetta Shura following reports that they were ready to deal with the Kabul government.

When a man came to police headquarters recently to complain that his motorcycle had been stolen, the police refused to act without a bribe.

“Fine,” he said, according to soldiers who witnessed the encounter. “I’m going to the Taliban. At least they’ll take me seriously.”

Wow, does that seem like deja vu to me. And it’s a good illustration of why U.S. counterterrorism goals won’t succeed without population-centric counterinsurgency. If a guy who gets his motorcycle stolen feels more comfortable reporting the theft to the Taliban, he’s unlikely to assist Jawad’s government or NATO with intelligence about where the Taliban is, or what its liaisons with the locals down south look like, or any of the other necessary supporting components that could dislodge the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies as a threat to the Kabul government. It starts with the motorcycle, basically. If the criminals in your neighborhood did a better job keeping the streets safe and providing something approximating justice, why would you ever help the police catch them?

Also interesting in that piece: negotiations with the insurgency aren’t seen as relevant in southern Afghanistan:

What the new strategy does not seek to do, however, is to borrow a page from the U.S. playbook in Iraq by creating tribal militias to fend off the Taliban. Commanders here said that approach could create even more warlords and new intratribal feuds. And the commanders see little benefit from negotiations with the Taliban right now, despite Obama’s support for such an overture.

Military officials regard the Taliban, composed largely of ethnic Pashtuns, as both too strong and too fragmented in the south to pursue an effective deal, although they remain open to the possibility in the east, where some tribal leaders who have supported the insurgency could be persuaded to switch sides.

I don’t that as being necessary in this case, and I think that if there were to be a scenario like that, I think that fundamentally those kinds of questions, Julian, are being addressed in the Afghan strategy review, which, as you know, is under way. So I wouldn’t be in a position to tell you if there’s sort of thinking under way about whether we should do this independent of whether there would be Afghan support for it. I just — I doubt that, because I think the Afghans have been vocally supportive of it, and we’ll follow their lead on this matter.

If that’s a denial, it’s by no means a firm one.

The Afghan government has laid out its broad thinking on reconciliation. But it’s unclear how proactive an approach they’re taking. At a press briefing two weeks ago, representatives from the government left me with the impression that they’re waiting for insurgents to basically walk in from the cold. If a brigade commander had the opportunity to work out a modus vivendi with insurgents in his or her area of operations, would it be embraced by Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan; U.S. Central Command Chief Gen. David Petraeus; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; and the Obama administration?

Obama to The New York Times:

Mr. Obama said on the campaign trail last year that the possibility of breaking away some elements of the Taliban “should be explored,” an idea also considered by some military leaders. But now he has started a review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan intended to find a new strategy, and he signaled that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq.

“If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said.

What might this look like? At a meeting a little over a week ago at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington with reporters, Zalmay Rassoul, Hamid Karzai’s national security adviser, sketched out an approach to reconciliation when I asked him. “Our policy is those who are willing to stop fighting and drop their guns,” are “not al-Qaeda” and “accept our constitution” are potentially reconcilable,” he said.

Pressed by another reporter, Rassoul divided the insurgency ino three groups. “The hardcore leadership [with] very close links to al-Qaeda and other state actors” are “irreconcilable,” he said, and the Karzai government wouldn’t negotiate with them. That would mean the Quetta Shura of Mullah Omar, and presumably the leaders of affiliated insurgent groups like Jalaleddin Haqqani or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Similarly, “the foot soldiers” were not people with whom to negotiate. “An economic alternative is the way forward for them,” Rassoul said. “These are people lured into terror… it’s our responsibility to lure them out.”

Negotiated reconciliation is the way forward for “the midlevel commanders,” he said. “Our purpose is to reconcile with them… Whether they give up violence up front now or late, it doesn’t matter… What matters is they renounce [violence] at some point.” Rassoul didn’t offer any particular guess on the size of this “midlevel” pool. But the day before, the Afghan foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, said that reconciliation was a realistic prospect for a “remarkable” proportion of the insurgency.

That’s the Afghan government’s perspective, anyway. It’s by no means clear the Obama administration will follow its lead. Throughout 2006 and 2007 in Iraq, truces between insurgents and U.S. commanders broke out throughout Sunni Iraq at the company to brigade level, all without the explicit approval of either Washington or Baghdad. It’s at least possible — I’m not saying it’s likely, just possible — that unit commanders in Afghanistan could pursue their own truces or alliances of convenience with particular insurgent groups as well.

The answer to that question depends on who you think the Taliban are. I’ve had tribal leaders and Afghan government officials at the province and district level tell me that 90 percent of the people we call Taliban are actually tribal fighters or Pashtun nationalists or people pursuing their own agendas. Less than 10 percent are ideologically aligned with the Quetta shura (a Taliban leadership council) or al Qaeda.

I would divide the enemy in Afghanistan into two very broad categories, people who are directly aligned with the Quetta shura or al Qaeda. Those people are probably beyond negotiating and I don’t think we’d gain anything significant from trying to negotiate with them.”

The others are almost certainly reconcilable under some circumstances.

Laura Rozen reports that Kilcullen is literally going to have dinner tonight with Vice President Joe Biden. Watch what Biden has to say about this in the coming days.

The strategy review, which has 60 days to do its work before Riedel returns to Brookings, is meant to go beyond military questions. Here’s how Gibbs put it:

MR. GIBBS: Well, obviously, there’s a review that overlaps also with what General Petraeus is doing. I think everyone has mentioned that in order for us to change the direction that we see in Afghanistan, we can’t simply focus on just the military aspects, that we have to focus on the diplomatic, the civil society, the reconstruction.

So I think with what Bruce is doing, and what other military planners are doing, is looking at the Afghanistan and Pakistan policies in a — not just in how many troops, but in a broad sense of what is possible and what needs to happen in order to change the direction.

So there it is: the question of what’s achievable; what the right goal is for U.S. policy; what’s in the U.S. interest; and how to achieve it at acceptable cost.

Along those lines, Christian Brose has a smart post at Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government blog arguing against a restriction of the goals in Afghanistan along the lines of President Obama’s articulation last night of the conditions for success. It’s causing me to kind of revise and extend some earlier comments: if the idea is indeed that the Afghan people are the center of gravity, they won’t bandwagon away from the Taliban-led insurgency without having their material and aspirational needs met, so some degree of — for lack of a better term — Central-Asian-Valhalla-ness is probably appropriate, even if you take the position that the core interest of the United States in Afghanistan-Pakistan is to eliminate Al Qaeda’s safe havens. The question is how much Valhalla-ness? Christian, I think, doesn’t offer a compelling argument for the necessity of democratization, providing instead a contention that such a thing is desirable. It certainly is, but the question is what’s achievable and what’s related to the national interest.

But in any event, Riedel is as level-headed a figure as could lead this review. If you read this recent interview with him on Af-Pak, you’ll see a pretty middle-of-the-road presentation. He favors more troops; he’s not hot on Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but frets over the lack of a clear alternative; he’s skeptical that anything could come of outreach to the Taliban; he wants to expand and deepen the U.S.-Pakistani relationship in order to build trust for the long haul; missile strikes in Afghanistan are dangerous and possibly counterproductive, so you need to primarily take on the safe havens using Pakistani troops. Whether these predilections presuppose the outcome of the review remains to be seen.