Is the war in Afghanistan becoming the woe in Afghanistan? Tuesday marks the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of the country, and despite many successes, the trends are not looking good.

CNN's intrepid war correspondent, Nic Roberson, says that the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai has held talks with the Taliban. The Taliban, you'll recall, ruled the country and harbored al-Qaeda at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The group is still run by Mullah Omar, son-in-law of Osama bin Laden. When President Bush was preparing the invasion that toppled Omar and directly led to Karzai's election as president, Bush condemned the Taliban regime, saying "it is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder." For good measure, Bush described life under the Taliban: "Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough."

If it has come to talking with the Taliban, the U.S.-led NATO effort to defeat the group and transform Afghanistan into an opium-free democracy is not going so well. The talks are being brokered by Saudi Arabian officials, which some of the neo-cons in the Bush administration loved to castigate, usually in anonymous comments, as little different in their fundamentalist policies than the Taliban themselves. A State Department spokesman indicated if it's OK with Karzai, it's OK with the U.S. The spokesman said that Taliban militants "coming out of the cold" should have a "place to go" provided they cut ties with al-Qaeda. That seems to be a curious distinction between the two groups that Bush resisted making when he called them partners in crime in 2001. Robertson reports that the Taliban is severing its ties with Bin Laden's outfit. That would be encouraging news, but we need more evidence for that.

Bringing in the Taliban in from the cold is hardly the only sign that things aren't going exactly as planned in Afghanistan.

British Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, who is handing over his command in Afghanistan, tells the London Times in today's edition that a military victory over the Taliban is "neither feasible nor supportable... What we need is sufficient troops to contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government."

Sherard Cowper-Coles, British Ambassador in Kabul, was even gloomier in his outlook as reported last week in a leaked diplomatic cable, according to the muckraking French publication Le Canard Enchaîné. Sir Sherard, a veteran UK diplomat who previously served as ambassador in sensitive spots like Israel and Saudi Arabia, reportedly said the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan "is destined to fail... The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust." According to the purported cable, Cowper-Coles felt the NATO troops were part of the problem, because they propped up an unpopular government and thus complicated a possible emergence from the crisis. In his reported view, the solution may well have to be an "acceptable dictator" in contrast with Bush's rosy vision of Afghan democracy. The British envoy, by the way, reportedly criticized both McCain and Obama for proposing more troops for Afghanistan, saying that "would identify us even more strongly as an occupation force." Reacting to the report, British officials publicly denied that the NATO mission is doomed to failure, or that the best solution is a dictatorship.

The New York Times today gives some credence to the British ambassador's purported concern about Afghan government corruption, publishing a report that suggests that the Afghan president's brother is a major Afghan drug dealer who is benefitting from Karzai's protection:

"The White House says it believes that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drug trafficking, and American officials have repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother is a political liability, two senior Bush administration officials said in interviews last week."

The Times story quotes the brother denying he is a drug dealer and claiming to be a victim of politics. Nonetheless, the Times goes on to say:

"United States officials fear that perceptions that the Afghan president might be protecting his brother are damaging his credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress his government, which has been under siege from rivals and a Taliban insurgency fueled by drug money."

More dark news comes from the London Sunday Times, whose veteran foreign correspondent Christina Lamb published a devastating dispatch yesterday after a recent visit with British forces and diplomats in Afghanistan's Helmand region. With the Taliban in control just seven miles down the road, she wrote, diplomats at the major British base "mostly stay within the compound walls, producing power point presentations and meeting 152 six-month objectives." She continued, "A day spent in this Foreign Office fantasy land was reminiscent of a propaganda tour I was taken on by the Russians in the dying days of their occupation in the late 1980s."

Allow me to end where the war in Afghanistan started. Bin Laden Still Not Captured or Killed isn't a headline you can publish every day without seeming ridiculous, but it's OK once a year or so. Seven years and not one but two wars later, Bush hasn't managed to bring in the al-Qaeda villain "dead or alive" as he swore to do, and he'll probably hang up his badge three months from now with that mission unaccomplished, too.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

Finding Feinberg's bones

When curators wanted to select items from Israel's State Archive for an exhibit on the country's 60th anniversary of independence, they had over 45 kms. of stuff stacked on shelves to choose from.

Now on display at the Israel Museum --the exhibition is called ”Blue and White Pages: Documenting the History of Israel”-- this final choice of curios and document is marvelously eclectic, and tells a lot about what Israel's founding fathers were pondering at the time of independence (how blue should the blue star of David emblazoned on the Israeli flag be?). It's a Caledon blue, a deep sea blue, the blue of a Chagall stained glass.

But, most intriguingly, it's the small things – a pottery shard, a note from the Jewish rebel leader Shimon Bar Kochba who fought Hadrian's legions—which illuminate the forces of history leading to Israel's creation. Says James Synder, the Israel Museum Director: “We wanted these documents of the last 60 years to resonate with the artifacts of Israel from the ancient times.”

And resonate it does. Part of the secret of the exhibit's impact is its masterful juxtaposition, put together by Chief Curator Yigal Zalmona. As he says, “These are the deeds themselves, not just documentation.”

It may seem a little haphazard at first, like rummaging through your granny's attic, but there's a clever method in all of this; a 16th century pilgrim's map to the “Promised Land” is hung next to the original 1947 map in which Israeli and Jordanian generals bisected the Holy Land with the infamous Green Line. Faith and politics and legions of warriors are forever re-drawing the map of this stony, cloud-raked land.

There's an even more cosmic juxtaposition: in 1967 workers in the Sinai digging up a date palm found that it had grown up through a human skeleton belonging to a Jewish traveler Avshalom Feinberg killed in 1917 by Bedouins. The date seed was in his pocket, evidently food for his desert trek, and when he died, it sprouted and grew into a tree.

Photos of workers excavating Feinberg's remains are on the wall next to fragments of a diary belonging to Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon who was killed in the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. The pages of his diary somehow (miraculously, some might say) survived the mid-air blast and fluttered down in a place called Palestine, Texas.

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem