For more on Afghanistan, the New Yorker’s George Packer is out with a long profile of the country’s president, Ashraf Ghani. Money quote: “Ghani is a visionary technocrat who thinks twenty years ahead, with a deep understanding of what has destroyed his country and what might yet save it,” Packer writes. But one of Ghani’s advisors adds, “he wants to transform the country. And he can do it. But it seems as if everything is arrayed against him.” Another advisor said that the Taliban’s gains in the south and east of the country make 2016 “the year of living dangerously.” Many don’t expect Ghani to make it to the end of his term in 2019. Afghanistan's nascent peace talks have hit another snag as the Islamist militant group Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, run by anti-Soviet insurgency veteran Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has walked out on the talks, the Long War Journal reports. Afghan officials were hopeful they could sew up an agreement with Hekmatyar but the Islamist militant leader issued a Taliban-style poison pill demand, saying that the group wouldn't sign on to any peace deal unless the Afghan government broke contact with the U.S. and removed all of its troops.
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