Know Thine Enemy.

I've known the Taliban since before I was born. My mother knew them, and my grandmother knew them. I've had Taliban encounters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Canada, as well as other countries. I have known the Taliban a long time. Only now they have a name. And only now, the rest of the world also knows their name. The Taliban are a state of mind.

- A friend of ours, writing under the name Fereshta, in today's Globe and Mail.

The antidote to backwardness and ignorance is education. But first Canadians will need to educate themselves, to truly learn about the enemy that Afghans, and now Canadians, face, and to recognize it as the danger that it really is. Ask an Afghan woman, she can tell you.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, "the notion of reintegration and reconciliation is on the table in a big way."