Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said last week that Canada's military operation will definitely end in Afghanistan by February 2011.

The Taliban plan to still be going strong at that time.

From the BBC (posted Sept. 9):

The basic situation is that the Taleban itself is proving to be resilient. A journalist held by the Taleban recently said he had been told by a senior commander that, unlike the 1990s, the Taleban now knew it could not win the war in a few months, or indeed a few years.

It was expecting to take 20 years to evict the foreign forces.

The renewed concentration on Afghanistan comes at a time of political weakness in the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai is seen by Western leaders as well-meaning but weak. Efforts are underway to encourage him to assert himself.

And not all Nato allies seem to have the stomach for the fight. Nato planners in Afghanistan now assume that the Dutch and Canadians will withdraw from combat operations by 2010/11, concentrating instead on training the Afghan army.

This itself is to double in size to 120,000 and some expectations are being placed on it for the long term.

The Dutch and Canadian transition might put pressure on Britain (and a new election has to be held by 2010) to reconsider, or at least justify, its level of commitment.