BBC NEWS | South Asia | Will the Afghan Taleban join peace talks?

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Will the Afghan Taleban join peace talks?: "Will the Afghan Taleban join peace talks?

By Martin Patience
BBC News, Kabul

Taleban fighter
The Taleban's insurgency is spreading and many say there is no military solution to the Afghan conflict

Newspapers are writing about it and Afghan officials and foreign diplomats are discussing it - talks with the Taleban.

Now President Hamid Karzai's own brother has confirmed a BBC report that he met former members of the Taleban in Saudi Arabia last month as part of a first step towards peace talks.

The conflict in Afghanistan has been running now for seven years and by almost every indicator, the security situation is getting worse.

There has been an unmistakable mood shift in the Afghan capital Kabul and the notion of reconciliation with the fundamentalist Islamic movement appears to be gathering momentum as a way of reining in the violence.

But if there were to be direct talks with the senior leaders of the Taleban, what would this actually mean in practice?

Well, first of all, the term Taleban is often used as a catch-all-phrase for the insurgents - it's far more complex than that.

Military veteran

The anti-government forces are far from being a monolithic bloc - there are competing egos, strategies and aims at work.

The only point that all the groups"