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(108,903 posts) Sat Oct 27, 2012, 09:39 AM Oct 2012

NEW AFGHAN WAR PHASE, WITH NO DECISIVE END SEEN

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHANISTAN_NEXT_CHAPTER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-10-27-09-27-43

This photo taken Oct. 10, 2012 shows Army Brig. Gen. John Charlton, left, foreground, talking to members of the Afghan National Civil Order Police at a military base in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan. A new chapter of the Afghanistan war is opening with a slimmed-down Western force doing more advising than fighting, a resilient Taliban showing little interest in peace talks, and Americans tempted to pull the plug on a conflict now in its 12th year. A decisive end seems nowhere in sight. (AP Photo/Robert Burns)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A new chapter of the Afghanistan war is opening with a slimmed-down Western force doing more advising than fighting, a resilient Taliban showing little interest in peace talks, and Americans tempted to pull the plug on a conflict now in its 12th year.

A decisive end seems nowhere in sight.

The allied offensive that just ended, spearheaded by an influx of 30,000 U.S. troops, hammered the Taliban in its southern strongholds. Yet the insurgency persists as the American-led international military coalition hands off security responsibilities to the Afghans before exiting in two years.

"We are probably headed for stalemate in 2014," says Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University political science professor who has advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that is the case, the U.S. will have to pump billions of dollars a year into Afghanistan for decades to prevent its collapse, Biddle says.