One of the UK's top generals in Afghanistan has told the Guardian that the West should have tried to talk to the Taliban over a decade ago as it would have been easier to find a solution in 2002 when the Taliban were on the run.
General Nick Carter said,
"Back in 2002, the Taliban were on the run."
"I think that at that stage, if we had been very prescient, we might have spotted that a final political solution to what started in 2001, from our perspective, would have involved getting all Afghans to sit at the table and talk about their future.
"The problems that we have been encountering over the period since then are essentially political problems, and political problems are only ever solved by people talking to each other."
