NIE on Hezbollah to be released soon .... ('Can we talk?')

(Ignatius/WaPo)- ...In a rapidly changing Islamic world, the Obama administration is weighing how best to talk with adversaries such as the Taliban and, perhaps, Hezbollah.One model for the administration, as it thinks about engagement of enemies, is the British process of dialogue during the 1990s with Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army. That outreach led to breakthrough peace talks and settlement of a conflict that had been raging for more than a century.
In the case of the Taliban, the administration has repeatedly stated that it is seeking a political settlement of the war in Afghanistan rather than a military one. That formula sometimes seems hollow when more than 100,000 U.S. troops are in combat. But it got more definition last month from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who opened the doors wider for dialogue....To draw the Afghan insurgents toward reconciliation, the administration is supporting a plan by President Hamid Karzai that would allow the Taliban to open an office in Kabul or perhaps outside Afghanistan, where contacts might be easier. Saudi Arabia was discussed as one possible site, but a more likely venue would be Turkey. The Turkish government is pondering the issue. Back-channel U.S. contacts with some Taliban figures have already begun, according to a report in the New Yorker last month by Steve Coll. This leak was regarded as so sensitive that one official suspected of sharing information is said to have been reprimanded......

The Hezbollah issue is still being framed, in terms of policy debate. But the White House has focused on it in recent weeks because of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Hezbollah that is nearing completion.
Officials who have read draft versions of the estimate say it assesses Hezbollah in a broad context, as a political and social force in Lebanon in addition to the militia officially designated by the United States as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Like most NIEs, this one is said to contain a broad array of views, with some analysts stressing Hezbollah’s terrorist capabilities and others noting the organization’s growing political role, including its representation in the Lebanese cabinet.
The political time bomb ticking away in the NIE is the question of whether the United States should seek some kind of direct or indirect engagement with Hezbollah — at least with its political wing. Officials who support this course argue that the organization is like the IRA or the PLO — with nonmilitary components that can be drawn into a dialogue.Contrarian thinking about Hezbollah was voiced publicly by John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser. In May 2010, he described it as “a very interesting organization”.....
The high-level discussion of Hezbollah illustrates the ferment in U.S. thinking about a Middle East that is being transformed by democratic uprisings. Officials caution that for now, the Hezbollah question is a matter for intelligence analysts, not policymakers. The White House recognizes that it has enough to deal with already without opening a new question that would produce shock waves in Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries..."