Afghanistan and Pakistan are shifting

I don't have a sense of the larger context of this, (I don't know whether to take this literally or as a pressure point,) but Hamid Karzai called for a fixed end date for foreign troops in Afghanistan.

President Hamid Karzai told a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation Tuesday that the international community should set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan.....

"If there is no deadline, we have the right to find another solution for peace and security, which is negotiations," Karzai was quoted as saying in a statement from his office.

This is particularly noteworthy as it comes during the US transition with Obama talking about inserting more troops, and the US doing another muster for more NATO commitments.

One possible context is that he's trying to cut some sort of deal with/through the Pakistanis who are getting increasingly aggravated with the US attacks coming from inside Afghanistan.

For a bit of internal Pakistani politics, notice the Pakistani military saying they could shoot down the US drones if only the government would allow them. (The attacks are the civilians fault.)

On the other hand, that same Pakistani government is beholden to the US as the IMF just sanctioned another $7.6 billion loan.

I don't have a greaterl point to this post except for the observation that the political situation is shifting under our feet.