Of course, they don't go back for centuries. They're a creature of the arming of the mujahedeen and the training in the madrasas, when encountering the Soviets when they were in Afghanistan.
To bring it down to the hard realities, we didn't negotiate with the Taliban when they were at their weakest. This was after the American military action in the wake of September 11, which Canada participated in with certain forces. We didn't put a political framework in with them then when they were at their weakest. Now we—maybe not Canada, but the United States and others, certainly the U.S.—are engaged in negotiating with them when they're much stronger. In the end you have to negotiate. My argument is we would have been much better off if we'd been aware at the outset of how important that was. That was the best scenario for negotiating. Now we're probably in the worst scenario. But those negotiations are taking place because there has to be an end to the war, and the war cannot end by military means, as has been demonstrated so dramatically over what's now the longest war the United States has been engaged in.