Wall St Journal: on the ICRC negotiating UN access to children in Afghanistan

International Committee of the Red Cross, the only international organization that maintains regular communications with the Taliban command, acts as an intermediary every time a new letter of support is issued. That happened 10 times in 2009, each time a new vaccination campaign was launched.

Dr. Mir of the WHO says he decided to ask the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, for assistance after watching how that organization facilitated talks between the South Korean government and the Taliban that led to the freeing of 23 Korean hostages kidnapped by the insurgents in July 2007.

...Afghan insurgents generally respect the ICRC's neutrality, unlike their counterparts in Iraq, who blew up the organization's Baghdad headquarters in October 2003. The ICRC maintains first-aid posts in some Taliban-held parts of the country and runs special taxi-ambulance services that evacuate wounded Taliban fighters from the battlefield as well as Afghan civilians caught in the crossfire.

Read more on the WSJ website.

Meanwhile, a new intelligence report proposes that analysts should focus on deep analysis of local social and political structures in Afghanistan:

He also calls for a complete culture change in the intelligence community which will see them forgoing their much loved Power Point slides for "meaty, comprehensive descriptions of pivotal districts throughout the country" produced on word processors.

"Analysts must absorb information with the thoroughness of historians, organise it with the skill of librarians, and disseminate it with the zeal of journalists," the report says.

Read more on the Guardian website.