I've just finished reading a report from the ICG about Afghanistan and it made for some pretty depressing reading - missed opportunities, warlords re-establishing control, impotent central government, etc. But the following quote is downright chilling... "Look, in Afghanistan, all your efforts are fruitless. Democracy is not implementable. The US and the Coalition forces will eventually be defeated in Afghanistan, and therefore we and the fundamentalist parties will remain in power for a long time. I advise you to cease your activities." What's chilling about it isn't so much what is said. You could probably find many a Talib who would say something like this. But the quote is attributed to a member of the National Security Directorate, ie, the secret police of the existing government. The person he's speaking to is a member of the Democratic Coalition, a grouping of pro-democracy political parties. That's the secret police of the existing government in Kabul. Hamid Karzai, the Northern Alliance, etc. Our anti-Taliban, anti-al Qaeda allies. If these guys think we will be defeated in Afghanistan, an idea that isn't even on the table anywhere I've been reading, then things look pretty bleak.
I think this report is a little off base. I doubt there will ever be a strong cental democratic government in Afganistan. It is a very tribal country. I find the increase in Taliban activity to not be a bad thing. Instead of isolated attacks they are attacking in numbers which makes them vulnerable to air power. There are reports that Al-Queda is losing its patience with the Taliban and have told them that either do something or loss our finacial support.
Well, I don't see how you could have read the 41-page report I linked in the 25 minutes between your post and mine but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I don't know if the report is off base or not, I'm not an Afghan expert, but it's certainly a very in-depth look at where things stand in Afghanistan at the moment. I recently read 'Soldiers of God' by Robert D. Kaplan, a book about his travels in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the Afghan mujahideen in the late 80s. It's interesting to see some of the characters that he discusses in the book (Abdul Haq, Gulbudin Hekmatyar, Ahmed Shah Masood) and what place they later took in the intervening years. A very, very interesting read.