While the Taliban model for society is not realistically in tune with modernism and progress and has severe social implications, especially for women, the inability of the Americans and Hamad Karzai to create feasible alternates within Afghan society has meant that the hold of the Taliban has a strong hold at the village and district level. A combination of force, money and tribal alliances make the Taliban prosper, and in some cases, even cut off the region from the Afghan government who may wish to develop projects there. On the other hand, some would argue that Hamad Karzai's government has received huge sums of money for development aid, against which there has been little development to speak off.

SILENCE!...I kill you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go&feature=related

Yes, we should negotiate. Negotiate does not mean appeasement.

Aubern Herbert wrote this in 1875, Essay Five, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State.
Essay Five, "The Ethics of Dynamite.

With a hideous leer upon his face, he turned to the governments and said:

You govern, you do what you choose, you take possession of body and mind, you wring from this subject human material all that you imagine that you want for your own purposes, you send men hither and thither to be shot for the quarrels that it amuses you to make, you burden them with all the restrictions and vexations that in your belief can add some little thing to your own security or convenience or dignity, and you do it just because you are strong enough to do it—because you have discovered and perfected the trick of the majority. You say that you have a majority on your side—that this majority is strong enough to inflict its will upon all others. Let it be so; I make no pretense to possess a majority; a minority is good enough for me—a small minority of desperate reckless men, believing in their ideas, and not caring much for their lives. But such as we are, we, too, have power. It is not like your power, disguised under innumerable forms and ceremonies; it is just what it professes to be—power, brutal, naked, and not ashamed. Come now, let us reason for a moment together. Where, after all, is the difference between us? We both of us are believers in power; we both of us desire to fashion the world to our own liking by means of power. The only difference between us is in the form of the power which we each make use of. Your power depends upon clever electioneering devices, upon tricks of oratory, upon organized wealth and numbers; mine is the power that can be carried in the pocket of any ragged coat, if the owner of the ragged coat is sufficiently endowed with courage and ideas. We are both seeking to govern. Why, then, do you turn your faces from me, flout me, and disown me? I am your brother, younger, it is true, than you, a little down in the world and disreputable perhaps, but for all that, child of the same family, equal in rank, and claiming by the same title deeds as yourselves. True, I am not magnificently equipped as you are; I have no court as you have, no army, no public institutions, no national treasury, no titles, no uniforms resplendent with decorations; I have only a few fanatical followers; and yet, perhaps, as regards the true test of power, I can command the fears of men and possess myself of their obedience quite as effectually as you can. Let us greet each other and shake hands, even if we are opposed. Believe me, though you shrink from recognizing me, I am in very deed your own brother, your coequal, flesh of your flesh, and spirit of your spirit. Henceforth from today we divide the government of the world between us. You are the force of the majority; and I am the force of the minority.