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President Barack Obama huddled with President Hamid Karzai inChicago on Sunday, urging Afghanistan's leader to acceleratenegotiations with the Taliban over a political solution to thelongest war in America's history. But the prospect for Karzainegotiating successfully with the insurgents is clouded by aquestion raised by Josef Stalin, on the eve of World War II, inresponse to the suggestion that he offer concessions to the Pope:"How many divisions does he have?" The Taliban now askthe same question about Karzai. And should the Afghan leader alsoask himself the question, he might reach a similarly dispiritingconclusion. Karzai's independent power base is minimal, as ishis ability to influence the outcome of his country's civilwar absent direct U.S. involvement. And that gives neither Karzainor the Taliban much incentive to cut a deal with the other. ( PHOTOS: Fighting for Afghanistan s Future ) While acknowledging "hard days ahead," Obama waspainting a picture of the "Afghan war as we understand it(being) over" after the U.S. combat role ends in 2014 andAfghanistan entering a "transformational decade of peace andstability and development." But his commander on the groundoffered a more chilling assessment on Sunday. "Idon't want to, again, understate the challenge that we haveahead of us," Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO's ISAFmission in Afghanistan, told a media briefing on the sidelines ofthe NATO summit in Chicago on Sunday. "The Taliban is still aresilient and capable opponent in the battlespace. There's no end of combat before the end of 2014.And, in fact, the Taliban will oppose the ANSF (Afghan NationalSecurity Forces) after 2014." In other words, the war won't end with NATO withdrawal. It's the realization that the Taliban will remain very muchalive and kicking after NATO leaves that has prompted Obama to press upon Karzai the need to engage with greater urgency in reconciliation talkswith the Taliban and also to implement electoral reformsto diminish corruption and make elections more transparent. ButKarzai is a survivor by instinct, and neither electoral reform norserious talks with the Taliban do much to enhance his prospects ofpolitical survival. The only thing keeping him in power over the past decade has beenthe presence of tens of thousands of Western troops. Even if theAfghan security forces NATO is frantically training to take over and suffering almost weekly "green on blue"fatalities as Afghan security men turn their guns on their Westernmentors were up to par, it requires a vast leap of faith toimagine they'll be loyal to Karzai. The President has aminimal political base; he was propelled into power as thepreferred option of the U.S.-led invasion force, a candidate whohad strong clan roots in the Pashtun heartland but was able to winthe consent of the Northern Alliance the Tajik, Uzbek andHazara warlords who had been the greatest beneficiaries of the NATOintervention and comprised its key allies among Afghan fightingforces. Since then, he has kept power by fancy footwork at the nexus offorces more powerful than himself, painting himself as theleast-worst option, with the corruption and cronyism that Westernleaders complain about being a symptom of that power equation, andof longstanding traditions. After all, when the CIA had first sentits operatives into Afghanistan to initiate the toppling of theTaliban, they were armed not with stirring calls to freedom anddemocracy, but with suitcases containing millions of dollars inhard cash. Karzai knows the limits of the loyalty of thosepresently aligned with the status quo, and the traditional fluidityof Afghan warlord politics. He holds his present position onlybecause there's no obvious alternative to play the rolehe's been playing. ( MORE: Obama s Afghanistan Plan: Echoes of Vietnam in the U.S. ExitStrategy ) Neither Karzai's rule nor the Afghan national security forcesare based on a genuine national political consensus; Afghanistanremains riddled with the same deep ethnic political fissures thatplagued it before the Americans arrived, and it's highlyunlikely that the Afghan security forces will somehow setthemselves apart from that conflict. On the contrary, it may be nomore than wishful thinking to cast the security forces as loyal toan idea of Afghanistan independent of the civil war taking place inthe country. A highly plausible scenario would see those securityforces break down along the ethnic fissures that correspond to thebattle lines of the civil war (although there may be plenty ofpolitical infighting among Pashtuns, too), rather than one in whichthey remain loyal to Karzai or whomever is elected to replace himin 2014. The Pansjiri Tajiks of the Northern Alliance, which has longprovided a key part of the ranks and officer corps of the Afghansecurity forces, are reportedly opposed to any power-sharing dealwith the Taliban, and are widely rumored to be arming themselvesfor a post-NATO showdown. That creates significant pressure onKarzai to put the brakes on any negotiations with the insurgents.So, as much as NATO needs Karzai to be talking to the Taliban toease the departure of Western troops, his best interests may lie inkeeping Western troops involved in propping him up for as long aspossible, even if the domestic political reality facing his Westernbackers obliges him to embrace the 2014 strategy. (Polls find thatmore than two-thirds of Americans now oppose U.S. involvement inAfghanistan.) The Taliban, for its part, also sees the limits of Karzai'spower, and brands him a "puppet" of the West. Thepurpose of Obama's Afghan "surge" that began inthe summer of 2009 was to double down the U.S. military commitmentin order to pummel the Taliban into suing for peace and deliveringit to the table sufficiently bloodied as to be ready to accept U.S.terms including a recognition of the constitutional order putin place after the NATO invasion, and by extension the authorityand legitimacy of President Karzai. But that, quite simply, has nothappened, as Allen pointed out. ( MORE: A New U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership: Should the Taliban BeAfraid? ) Feeling the wind at its back, and sensing that the tide of Afghanpublic opinion has turned more sharply against the presence ofWestern troops and that the Western powers have lost their appetitefor an expeditionary war in which they've essentially beenspinning their wheels for the past five years, the Taliban brokeoff secret negotiations earlier this year. The movement isreportedly split over whether to seek a compromise solution whenNATO is already moving towards the exit, and hard-liners may havegained the upper hand. Pakistan retains considerable influence overa movement that was once its protege, and it is determined to seethat its interests which include having a friendly governmentin Kabul (Karzai is viewed by Pakistan's securityestablishment as tightly aligned with India) are accommodatedin any settlement. The Obama Administration failed to even getPakistan to agree to a deal ahead of the Chicago summitto reopen supply lines to NATO forces in Afghanistan throughPakistani territory; the supply lines have been closed since aborder incident in which Western warplanes killed Pakistani troops.An accord on the future of Afghanistan clearly remains some wayoff. Then there are the more militant Taliban elements that retain tieswith al-Qaeda, as well as some of the movement's younger,more embittered mid-level commanders, none of whom see any goodcoming out of negotiating a compromise when their primary enemy,the U.S. and its NATO partners, has made clear it intends towithdraw by the end of 2014. It's hard to argue, in theTaliban's internal debate, that time is not on theinsurgents' side. And resistance to negotiation and compromise on each side of theKarzai-Taliban equation simply reinforces the same on the opposingside. So, while Obama and other NATO leaders would like to seeAfghanistan's power players adopt a narrative that allowsWestern forces to withdraw with a sense of having put the countryon the road to peace and stability, the Afghan players seem to haveother ideas. They're not going to make this easy. PHOTOS: The Disappearing Afghan Box Camera. 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