Prospect of peace talks rises in Afghanistan

[pkpatriotic]

Prospect of peace talks rises in Afghanistan - Los Angeles Times
As would-be mediators emerge, the prospect of negotiations between Western and Afghan officials and the Taliban is not so readily dismissed.
By Laura King
October 29, 2008

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -- The Afghan war is at its highest pitch since it began seven years ago, growing daily in scope and savagery. Yet on both sides of the conflict, the possibility of peace negotiations has gained sudden prominence.

Among Western and Afghan officials, analysts and tribal elders, field commanders and foot soldiers, the notion of talks with the Taliban, once dismissed out of hand, has recently become the subject of serious debate.

Both sides acknowledge that there are enormous impediments. Each camp has staked out negotiating positions that are anathema to the other. Neither side professes the slightest trust in the other's word. Each side claims not only a battlefield edge, but insists that it is winning the war for public support.

But whether they are willing to admit it publicly, both sides have powerful incentives for turning to negotiations rather than pushing ahead with a grinding war of attrition. Would-be mediators have emerged, preliminary contacts have taken place, and more indirect talks are likely soon.

All around, a sense of battle fatigue is undeniable.


"The most important consideration is the feelings of the Afghan people," said Humayun Hamidzada, a senior aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "And the fact is that they are sick and tired of war."

A major poll released Tuesday by the Asia Foundation found that Afghans are growing more pessimistic about their future. Large swaths of the country are under Taliban control. Travel by road between major cities is a life-threatening gamble. Here in the capital, where three Westerners were gunned down last week, abductions and attacks are becoming commonplace.

Karzai has been the strongest proponent of reconciliation, at times alarming his U.S. patrons with his appeals to the insurgents. But some ex-warlords who bear the scars of their own battles against the Taliban also support broad-based talks. A number of the movement's former adherents believe there is room for negotiation, as do tribal leaders who called for talks after a binational jirga, or traditional assembly, that ended Tuesday in the Pakistani capital.

The insurgency in Afghanistan, which is made up of many disparate factions, has serious internal disagreements over discourse with the enemy. Western allies, as well, appear divided.

"No one wants to be seen as tipping their own hand," said a Western diplomat in Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for his government. "So whenever there is some suggestion of readiness to talk expressed from any particular quarter, there's also a backlash."

The departing British commander in Afghanistan, Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith, declared this month that the war could not be won militarily, suggesting that reconciliation was the only route to peace. Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the American commander of NATO forces in the country, responded by criticizing what he called defeatist attitudes.

Taliban spokesmen also disparaged the idea of peace talks, even though contacts took place last month in Saudi Arabia between Afghan representatives and several ex-Taliban who remain close to the austere Islamic movement. More such talks are expected soon.

Western and Afghan officials say there are signs of discord between ideological hard-liners who identify with Al Qaeda and so-called small-t Taliban -- native Afghans who do not necessarily subscribe to the idea of an overarching jihad, or holy war, against the West.
"You can talk to some foot soldiers, even to some commanders," said Khaleeq Ahmad, a former senior aide to Karzai. "But the ones who are out there beheading people, you can't talk to them. So where does that leave you?"

Among longtime observers, there is disagreement over whether so-called local Taliban can be separated from more radical, Al Qaeda-influenced factions.

Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel, a former Taliban foreign minister who took part in the Saudi Arabia talks, told the Reuters news agency this month that "Al Qaeda will not be allowed to create an obstacle. . . . It is the right of Afghans to negotiate for peace."

But Waheed Muzhda, a senior Taliban official when the movement was in power who is now a researcher in Kabul, said Westerners would be disappointed if they sought to drive a wedge between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

"You cannot separate the two," he said. "The Taliban didn't give up Osama bin Laden, under the greatest possible pressure. Why would they break from Al Qaeda now?"

Hamidzada reiterated that Karzai was willing to talk to fugitive leaders of the insurgency -- even those with a U.S. bounty on their heads.

"The president is willing to talk with anyone, anywhere, even Mullah Omar," he said, referring to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban movement's self-described "emir" who sheltered Bin Laden.

Critics within Karzai's administration believe certain figures in the insurgency should remain blacklisted. But others insist that times have changed, and so should the policy.

"I fought against them, but that is not the way to solve the problem now," said Taj Mohammed Mujahid, a former warlord who is now a lawmaker. "It is time to talk."

Mujahid said any talks that did not eventually involve Omar and another key insurgent commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is allied with the Taliban, would be meaningless. "They are the ones in charge," he said.

Still, Omar and Hekmatyar do not control all factions in the field. The insurgency is intertwined with criminal gangs, drug lords, arms smugglers and local militia chieftains.

And some prominent commanders with a large following in Pakistan, such as Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, are thought by some Western intelligence officials to answer to Pakistan's spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.


Although the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's military superiority over the Taliban is unquestioned, some observers believe the insurgents will seek to strengthen their hand in negotiations by scoring whatever high-profile victories they now can. They managed to down a U.S. helicopter this week, although the crew survived and the craft was recovered.

"They have got some important advantages lately, like more powerful explosives for IEDs, which have been inflicting a lot of casualties on the foreigners," Muzhda said, referring to improvised explosive devices. "It's like the lesson learned from the time of the Russians: You can kill a bear with a thousand small injuries."

Recruitment for insurgent groups has grown easier in Afghanistan as attention shifts away from the conflict in Iraq, he said. "All across the Muslim world, they are saying now: 'If you want to join the jihad, go to Afghanistan,' " Muzhda said.

Western military officials said such talk amounts to little more than bravado, disguising a bedrock recognition on the insurgents' part that it is virtually impossible for them to prevail militarily against more than 65,000 coalition troops, whose numbers are scheduled to grow in coming months.

"We are a very strong military, and the enemy knows this," said Canadian Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, the chief spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

Among Afghans, there is widespread disillusionment with the Karzai government, but also growing revulsion over brutal acts by the Taliban.

This month, insurgents dragged more than two dozen young men off a bus and executed them, some by beheading. Days later, their home village rose up in a rare public protest. More than 1,000 people chanted "Death to the Taliban!"

Officials in the southern province of Helmand said this month that insurgents had gouged out a farmer's eyes in front of his wife and seven children, apparently suspecting him of aiding the government or Western forces.

"All this butchery, for what?" asked Kabul fruit seller Jamal Khan. "What does this gain for our country?"

U.S. officials have said little about the Karzai government's peace overtures other than that any talks must take place only with insurgents who accept the Afghan Constitution and are willing to lay down their arms.

But U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has suggested publicly that some form of negotiated settlement is possible, if not inevitable.

"There has to be ultimately, and I'll underscore 'ultimately,' reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this," Gates told NATO defense ministers in Budapest, Hungary, this month. "That's ultimately the exit strategy for all of us."

King is a Times staff writer.

 

[pkpatriotic]

U.S. Mulls Talks With Taliban in Bid to Quell Afghan Unrest - WSJ
Gen. Petraeus Backs Effort to Win Over Some Elements of Group
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN, SIOBHAN GORMAN and JAY SOLOMON

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is actively considering talks with elements of the Taliban, the armed Islamist group that once ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al Qaeda, in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.

Senior White House and military officials believe that engaging some levels of the Taliban -- while excluding top leaders -- could help reverse a pronounced downward spiral in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Both countries have been destabilized by a recent wave of violence.

The outreach is a draft recommendation in a classified White House assessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, according to senior Bush administration officials. The officials said that the recommendation calls for the talks to be led by the Afghan central government, but with the active participation of the U.S.

The idea is supported by Gen. David Petraeus, who will assume responsibility this week for U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Petraeus used a similar approach in Iraq, where a U.S. push to enlist Sunni tribes in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq helped sharply reduce the country's violence. Gen. Petraeus earlier this month publicly endorsed talks with less extreme Taliban elements.

The final White House recommendations, which could differ from the draft, are not expected until after next month's elections. The next administration wouldn't be compelled to implement them. But the support of Gen. Petraeus, the highly regarded incoming head of the U.S. Central Command, could help ensure that the policy is put in place regardless of who wins next month's elections.

The proposed policy appears to strike rare common ground with both presidential candidates. Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama has said he thinks talks with the Taliban should be considered and has advocated shifting more military forces to Afghanistan. Republican contender Sen. John McCain supports, as part of his strategy, reaching out to tribal leaders in an effort to separate "the reconcilable elements of the insurgency from the irreconcilable elements of the insurgency," Randy Scheunemann, the campaign's top foreign-policy adviser, said Monday.

The U.S. policy review is taking place against the backdrop of ongoing talks between Taliban sympathizers and Afghan government officials. The negotiations, which have been held in recent weeks in Saudi Arabia and moderated by Saudi officials, have primarily involved former Taliban members who have since left the armed group. But a U.S. official said some of the discussions have included current Taliban members and others with close ties to the group's leadership.

Mutual Distrust
U.S. talks would have to overcome years of mutual distrust, a U.S. policy that has favored arrest rather than outreach, and some doubts over whether participants on the Taliban side would be credible. But the possibility of U.S. talks with Taliban officials comes amid a wholesale restructuring of American policy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The U.S. has endorsed a Pakistani move to arm thousands of anti-Taliban fighters along the country's porous border with Afghanistan, and senior American officials say they are considering creating similar local militias in Afghanistan as well.

With violence worsening, the U.S. is also taking some harsher measures. The Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Command have stepped up a campaign of missile strikes against militant targets inside Pakistan, a source of mounting casualties and growing public anger there. The U.S. is planning to deploy at least 12,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year.

Few of the new measures would carry as much political and emotional weight as talking with members of the Taliban, an armed group that has been an American foe since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that followed the attacks was designed to oust the Taliban over its harboring of al Qaeda, and U.S. troops have spent the past seven years trying to capture or kill as many of its members as possible.

U.S. officials stress that they would play a supporting role in any future talks with the Taliban, which they say would be led by the Afghan central government and powerful Afghan tribal figures. The talks would primarily include lower-ranking and mid-level Taliban figures, not top officials from the group's ruling body.

"We'll never be at the table with Mullah Omar," one U.S. official said, referring to the fugitive leader of the Taliban.

The prospective talks would have two main goals, according to senior American officials: extending the Kabul government's authority across Afghanistan and persuading some Taliban figures to cease their attacks against U.S. and Afghan targets.

"We all agree on the need for the people of Afghanistan to come together if they are going to succeed in creating a lasting and viable state," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said by email. "It remains to be seen if some in the Taliban will really renounce violence and extremism and play a constructive role in Afghanistan."

U.S. opposition to talks with the Taliban has been dissolving as the security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan continues to deteriorate. The number of attacks across Afghanistan has skyrocketed, and more U.S. troops are dying there than in Iraq. Pakistan has been rocked by a wave of attacks, including a massive bombing at a Marriott hotel in the capital of Islamabad and the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

War Negotiations
"Most wars don't end on the basis of complete capitulation," said Kara Bue, a former State Department official who recently was co-chairwoman of an outside working group on Pakistan policy. "They're ended in many cases on the basis of negotiations."

It's far from clear that Taliban members with real control over the group's operations will want to take part in talks with the U.S. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has long supported reconciling with Taliban leaders who are willing to accept Kabul's authority and cut any links to al Qaeda, but U.S. and Afghan officials acknowledge that few Taliban figures were willing to make those commitments.

The two sides would also have to bridge a turbulent history of efforts at contact. Former Taliban Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil approached U.S. officials in early 2002 about working together, but the U.S. responded by arresting him. He was held at Guantanamo Bay for four years and has since returned in Kabul.

In subsequent years, some U.S. officials quietly conducted informal outreach to Taliban leaders, but the military was more interested in taking them into custody, said a former senior U.S. intelligence official. "There were instances where Taliban [leaders] were willing to work with us, and we didn't want to deal with them at all," the former official said.

Talking to the Taliban has been a sensitive issue for the Afghan government as well. Last year, Mr. Karzai expelled a United Nations diplomat, plus a second who worked for the European Union, for conducting negotiations with Taliban leaders without Kabul's specific consent.

Senior U.S. officials who are working on the White House review said the recommendations may not explicitly call for joining the Afghan government's talks with the Taliban, but may instead refer to greater interaction with local Afghan leaders in unstable parts of the country. In restive eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, where many Pashtun tribal leaders are Taliban or Taliban sympathizers, this strategy would effectively amount to dealing with the Taliban, these U.S. officials said.

"We and the Afghans negotiate with the tribes every day on the district level," said a senior State Department official working on the review. "Sometimes they're Taliban or their supporters. Often they say: 'If we get what we want, we'll lay down our arms.'"

Another senior American official said that talks with the Taliban will force the U.S. to make hard decisions about how much to offer the armed group for its support.

The U.S. would certainly be willing to pay moderate Taliban members to lay down their weapons and join the political process, these official said. But Taliban demands for amnesty and formal political authority over remote parts of the country might be harder to stomach, he said.

"The question always comes down to price," he said. "How much should be willing to offer guys like this?"

Current and former officials attributed the White House's policy shift to the influence of Gen. Petraeus. "I do think you have to talk to enemies," he said Oct. 8 during a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "You want to try to reconcile with as many of those as possible while then identifying those who truly are irreconcilable."

Not everything that worked in Iraq will work in Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus cautioned. Still, he said that engaging some members of the Taliban would be "a positive step."

Ms. Bue, the former State Department official, said U.S. officials would at a minimum want Afghan militants to help U.S. and Afghan forces root out the foreign fighters who have been responsible for most of the bloodiest attacks in Afghanistan.

Mapping Tribal Areas
U.S. officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. military's Special Operations Command have been mapping the key tribal areas of Afghanistan, said one person familiar with the planning. The goal is to look at the tribes, sub-tribes and clans in each province and understand whom they're aligned with. Targeting lower-level leaders is likely to be more fruitful than focusing on senior figures, said Seth Jones, a Middle Eastern analyst at the Rand Corp. think tank who travels regularly to Afghanistan.

The leadership of the Taliban may have no incentive to negotiate because they view themselves as winning the conflict and because "their vision of the country is so diametrically opposed" to that of the central Afghan government, he said.

 

[Evil Flare]

Talebans First Demands is that US & Nato First Leave ...


will they Do it ???


NO !!!!

 

[DarkStar]

All the US has to do is throw money at the Taliban, and they will fall over each other rushing towards them, like a pack of hungry dogs chasing a bone.

When the green buck flashes, and the "chhankaar" of coins is heard, you will quell the last resistance in these Talibs.