With the new US administration shifting its focus from Iraq to the once supposedly "forgotten war" in Afghanistan, a new tactic – talking with the Taliban to divide and rule the insurgency – has taken the spotlight.

Although official announcements of the new policy have yet to be made, advanced reports show Barak Obama is now likely to seek a political route out of the impasse, rather than rely on an ineffective military.

The president signalled the new tactic in an interview with The New York Times of March 6, when he conceded the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and the door to talks with the more "moderate elements" of the Taliban was ajar.

The plan was to peel off hard-core insurgents and seek reconciliation with the remainder.

Obama’s deputy, Joseph Biden, hinted at a similar policy during a NATO meeting in Brussels last week.

Only about 5 per cent of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan were "incorrigible", he declared.

At least 70 per cent were not committed to the Taliban and al-Qaeda’s extremist goals and opposed the occupation only because they were paid to do so.

The tactic is a break with the non-compromise policy of Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush.

Enthusiasm

Talks with the moderate Taliban, a "surge" of 17,000 troops in Afghanistan and a "smarter" Pakistan policy is expected to re-ignite new enthusiasm for an old war.

And enthusiasm is sorely needed.

Eight years after toppling the Taliban government, the US and NATO are at the edge of a quagmire; their troops can win battles but not the war. The Taliban still control most of the countryside and have turned the south bordering Pakistan into a trap for the occupiers.

The strategy of divide and rule is at least as old as colonialism.

The overseer of military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Commander of the US Central Command General David Petraeus used to apply a similar method in Iraq in dealing with Sunni fighters.

But will it work?

Afghanistan is not Iraq and as Carlotta Gall writes in the New York Times: "Afghan government officials and Western diplomats, including those already in contact with the Taliban" warn that talking only to moderates is doomed to failure.

"They say that negotiations have to be conducted with broad consultation among the Taliban leadership and through Pashtun tribal leaders and elders, since the Taliban are all ethnic Pashtun and ultimately answerable to their tribes," her report says.

President Obama knows Afghanistan is different from Iraq.

"You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes," he told The New York Times.

"Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, so figuring all that out is going to be a much more of a challenge," he said.

And will the divide-and-rule tactic work with an enemy such as the Taliban who thinks it is winning and knows that the writ of Hamid Kazai’s government extends not much further than Kabul?

The Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies have fought a classic guerrilla war.

When the enemy is in the ascendancy, they retreat into their homelands of inhospitable terrain, sparse population and little governance to pursue a war of attrition.

Their strategy has not only strengthened their hold across Afghanistan but helped them spread their wings into Pakistan.

Could it be that the Taliban will see the US as seeking "reconciliation" out of weakness?

Will "moderate" Taliban "foot-soldiers" put themselves at risk to accept talks with an opponent seen as facing defeat?

And how will the US "parse out those Taliban members who can be reconciled?" asked intelligence expert Reva Bhalla in an analysis published by private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) on March 10.

Asked for his response to the proposed new tactic, Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf, called it "illogical". There were no "moderate Taliban", he said.

Even if Joe Biden’s estimate of 70 per cent of "reconcilable" insurgents is not an exaggeration, the US and NATO forces are likely to have difficulty finding them among their "invisible" enemy.

Money is also unlikely to do the trick.

The Taliban with their access to the revenue from illicit opium are not desperate Iraqi Sunnis.

The trade serves as breast milk to the Taliban; it keeps them alive and with the capacity to survive intensive military offensives as they wait the enemy out.

Unrealistic

The concept of "reconciliation" offers little hope for ending the war in Afghanistan. Any political solution that intends to isolate and then defeat the most intransigent seems unrealistic.

Instead of forcing the Taliban to surrender and accept an imposed system of representative democracy, would it not be better to foster their decision-makers into abandoning al-Qaeda?