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Terry Glavin is in Afghanistan and has posted about his experiences here, here, here, here and here.

Reading of the hopes of ordinary people in these posts is an antidote to the "controlled warlordism" school of pessimism. Fatana Gilani, head of the Afghanistan Women's Council, puts it into perspective. Terry summarises her views:

The recent hullabaloo about the prospects for truce talks with the Taliban should be understood as a harbinger of something horrible, and no friend of the Afghan people should be happy with it. Foreign powers cannot be trusted to "negotiate" with the Taliban, and neither can President Karzai, who's been pleading for talks ever since he was elected. The Afghan people have been abandoned before, and quite enough thugs and gangsters have been accommodated by backroom deals in recent years. If there's any talking to do, it should be led by the masses of the Afghan people, she said, with a strong phalanx of Afghan women at the helm.

As well as this, there is a strong reminder of the power and importance of adult education in transforming life chances, communities and, in this case, the future of a nation in his mention of the Afghan-Canadian Community Center in Kandahar.

I was also really taken with this comment,

The poverty here is absolutely savage. But for a foreigner like me, it's much safer to be visiting among the poor of this city than it is to be rolling around in a swish Toyota in the swanker parts of town, with armed guards.

Funny, that. Works the same way, all over the world.

It is true of my limited overseas experience too. Nevertheless, keep safe Terry, you have some important stories to tell.