It is the fighting season in Afghanistan. The Taliban are successfully operating across of Afghanistan. No prominent efforts are in place to reverse or even slow down their momentum. In the beginning of this year the NATO authorities pronounced the summer in Afghanistan to be extremely tough. Tough in a sense that, there would be some major clashes between security keeping forces and the Taliban in southern region of Afghanistan where insurgents have some significant influences. However, the people can not observe any major push against the growing operations of Taliban. The high National and international security officials altered their statements about Taliban operation from time to time.

We can not deny the fact that the Taliban are stronger than previous years, whether it is southern provinces or elsewhere in country. Dutch withdrawal and announcements of US, UK and other countries to start their forces' drawdown from Afghanistan in the near future have actually strengthened the moral of Taliban. They think they are winning.

This thought can be deemed one major cause for Taliban denial and red signal to the reconciliation offers of Afghan government. It is very vital to weaken the Taliban, if government and its allies want them to come to the negotiations table.

The Taliban have not requested that their names should be removed from the UN blacklist. However, names of several Taliban leaders have been removed and the names of others are being reviewed for removal on the request of President Karzai administration.

Inclusion of Taliban's name in the black list did not impact their mission and operation in the same way removal of their names seems to have to significant impact. Nor Taliban were upset when their names went to blacklist neither they welcome the efforts of Afghan government for deletion of their names.

By killing more civilians, awarding death punishment to one woman and cutting the nose and ears of the other, killing high profile people and threatening / targeting the tribal leaders, the Taliban have shown that they are the same people as they were a decade ago. There is need for intensification of counterinsurgency war even if you want to reconcile with Taliban.