The question of indiscipline among the force, the desertions from its ranks, the absence of trained officers' cadres, and the possibility that its top commanders would entertain political ambitions and capture power are also relevant but being ignored at present.

The conference also conditionally agreed to revise the proportion of development aid delivered through the Afghan government budget from about a third to half in two years. The condition placed on the Karzai government was that it would make efforts to tackle corruption. Now this is a tricky situation as the Western governments and others were in the past reluctant to provide aid directly to the Afghan government departments due to complaints of corruption and were instead channelling assistance through non-governmental organizations. Now this policy may undergo change but the Afghan government will have to show its commitment to fight the widespread corruption, which according to some studies totals $2.5 billion a year in Afghanistan. President Karzai has promised to initiate measures to tackle corruption and has tried to nominate relatively honest ministers in his cabinet, but it would be impossible to do much to bring the corrupt government functionaries to justice in a country where warlords control levers of power, $3 billion or so cash is illegally taken out of the country in a year, drug-trafficking remains the major component of the economy and patronage and favours are extended to the elite classes at the expense of the common people.

The conference endorsed re-elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai's plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters willing to 'cut ties with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and pursue their political goals peacefully.' The reintegration plan would depend on the willingness of a significant number of Taliban commanders and fighters to give up fighting and agree to lead normal life and join the political mainstream. Such efforts have been made in Afghanistan in the past also but on a smaller scale and with small funds.

In an effort to find partners among the Taliban to take his reintegration plan ahead, Karzai has announced that he will invite moderate Taliban to a loya jirga, or grand assembly, in Kabul in the spring to involve them in the peace and reconciliation process. Taliban have already rejected the move but Karzai is ready to continue his efforts to that end. For this purpose, he is asking the UN Security Council to drop the names of those Taliban leaders from its sanctions list who are living peacefully or are willing to renounce violence. It isn't known as to which Taliban leaders and commanders are in the list being drawn up by him for getting their names removed with the help of the U.S. from the 'blacklist' on whom sanctions were imposed in 2001 by the Security Council for having links with Al Qaeda.
But the UN Security Council, it seems, was already seized of the matter as its sanctions' panel was quick to remove the names of five former Taliban ministers from the list. In fact, this decision came even before Karzai could deliver his own list to the UN, whose Afghanistan representative Kai Eide publicly asked the Afghan government in the fourth week of January for the names of Taliban figures it wanted deleted from the 'blacklist'. It is thus clear that the UN Security Council was already working on the 'blacklist' and was waiting for an opportune moment to make their decision public.

The five men whose names were struck down from the UN list include former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who had surrendered to the U.S. forces in February 2002 at the Kandahar airbase without taking the Taliban leadership into confidence and is living in Kabul under the protection of the Afghan government since his release in 2005.

Others no longer under UN sanctions include Faiz Mohammad Faizan, a former Taliban deputy commerce minister, Mohammad Musa Hotak, who served as deputy planning minister in the Taliban government, Abdul Hakim Munib, a deputy Taliban minister of tribes and border areas, and Shams-us-Safa Aminzai, a senior information official in the Afghan foreign ministry during Taliban rule.

It was strange that these five were still sanctioned by the UN despite the fact that Muttawakil parted ways with the Taliban in 2002, Musa Hotak is now an elected member of the Afghan Parliament from his native Wardak province, and Abdul Hakim Munib served as governor of Taliban-infested Urozgan province during Karzai's rule and was sacked sometime back on corruption charges. Their names were also incompletely written in the UN 'blacklist' and no effort was made since the list was haphazardly drawn up in 2001 to have it reviewed.

The five men are no longer associated with the movement. In fact, the Taliban under Mullah Omar's leadership have publicly stated that Muttawakil and other former Taliban officials cannot represent the movement. There is even suspicion that these former Taliban members could be working for the Afghan government and the U.S.-led coalition forces to divide the mainstream Taliban movement.

There were 144 Taliban names on the original UN sanctions list drawn up in 2001 at the time of the U.S. invasion of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Under the sanctions, they were barred from undertaking international travel, their bank accounts and other assets were frozen and an arms embargo was imposed on them. In practice, the sanctions didn't mean anything as Taliban leaders on the list went into hiding rather than undertaking international travel, none had any bank account and arms embargo could have no purpose in a country awash with weapons. In fact, former Taliban leaders such as Muttawakil even made international travel despite being sanctioned by the UN when he flew to Saudi Arabia last year to perform Umra as a guest of the Saudi government.

As Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, pointed out, some of those listed in the UN 'blacklist' had died and others were no longer active in the Taliban movement. He backed a review of the UN list, though he stressed that the names of Mullah Omar and other top Taliban leaders shouldn't be removed as they were among the 'irreconcilables' with whom no business could be done and were closely aligned with Al Qaeda.
Karzai also hinted that the names of Mullah Omar and other top Taliban commanders cannot be deleted from the list. This means that Karzai at this stage is asking for removal of low-ranking Taliban members, probably in the third tier of leadership, from the list as part of confidence building measures to facilitate dialogue with the Taliban or trigger defections from their ranks.

There is another list of more than 250 wanted men alleged to be Al Qaeda members and also under UN sanctions. There is no move to remove any names from the Al Qaeda list even though it was reported that some had died or were captured.

Another such measure, though not yet on any agenda, is reviewing the cases of about 750 people, mostly Afghan Taliban, in U.S.-run military prisons in Afghanistan. This too is a matter of grievance for the Taliban leadership. The detainees are living in tough conditions, nobody has been tried and even the charges against them are not known. 
Though Karzai received international backing for his so-called 'reintegration plan' at the London conference, there are question marks whether this project can succeed in view of the failure of almost similar, though smaller and inadequately funded, plans such as the Afghan government's still running National Reconciliation Commission.
Taliban have already rejected the latest offer of talks by President Karzai and dubbed the use of money to lure Taliban fighters as unrealistic and unworkable. Taliban have also dismissed the London conference and refused to negotiate with Karzai as long as foreign forces were present in Afghanistan. In a long statement by the Taliban Leadership Council, it was stated that the Afghan government would not be able to divide and weaken Taliban by using money.

However, there was something interesting in the Taliban statement and this could be a message as to what needs to be done to make them agree to peace talks. The statement pointed out that if the U.S.-led coalition forces and their government were keen to make concrete efforts for peacefully resolving the Afghan conflict, then three measures need to be taken to create the right conditions for the peace process. One was revoking the U.S. and Nato decision of sending an additional 37,000 troops to Afghanistan as this would lead to more fighting instead of bringing peace. Second, the Taliban wanted release of all their prisoners being held in the U.S. detention centre in Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places. Third, the statement pointed out that instead of deleting a few names from the UN sanctions list, all the names in it should be removed as this was unjustly drawn and no Taliban figure on the list was ever tried or convicted for having links to Al Qaeda at the time.

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