Taliban,US,Pakistan's Qatar,peace initiative Updates & Discussions.

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Pakistan engaged Taliban to get talks back on track - DAWN.COM

 

[Khaqan Humayun]

Saltanat-E-Quran (Islamic Pakistan)
Amreca will leve Afghanintan soon what will happen next??? Same poor Pakistan poor Afghanistan and other Muslims countryes so Must go for a Big Islamic state visit our page on Facebook
Saltanat-E-Quran (Islamic Pakistan)

 

[fatman17]

With US–Taliban talks in stalemate, uncertainty looms in Afghanistan


July 31st, 2013

Author: Sajjad Ashraf, NUS



As the Taliban makes its presence felt even inside Kabul’s Red Zone, Afghanistan’s political structures are creaking.

‘Once American troops are withdrawn, the existing government will collapse’, says William Polk, the veteran US foreign policy commentator. Tino Weibezahl, the head of Kabul office of Konrad Adenauer Foundation, says people associated with the current regime are attempting to get their families out.

But even as talks in Doha between the Taliban and the United States remain in stalemate, President Barack Obama is apparently considering complete American withdrawal by the end of 2014. The impasse over what appear to be trivial protocol issues — such as the name of the Taliban political office and the flag used over the building — shows how difficult it will be to resolve the larger conflict. And while the Taliban gained international legitimacy with the formal announcement of talks with the United States, the negotiations, if they ever begin, are unlikely to change the nature of war inside Afghanistan.

The talks in Doha are a reminder of several missed chances to end the war earlier. I was present during the 2005 Asian Security Conference (Shangri-la Dialogue) in Singapore, when General Jamshed Ayaz, president of the Institute of Regional Studies Islamabad, suggested talking to the Taliban. The whole house rose in ridicule at the suggestion. In April 2007 Kurt Beck, head of the German Social Democratic Party, was scoffed at as ‘clueless’ by Chancellor Angela Merkel when he suggested talking to the Taliban, while at the Bonn Conference in December 2011 President Hamid Karzai scuttled the announcement of Taliban–US talks, which had been imminent. The United States first accepted talking to the ‘good Taliban’, but is now compelled to negotiate with the entire organisation.

The costs of these missed chances to negotiate are enormous. Despite claims to the contrary, a study released by the Bundeswehr (Germany’s military) at the end of May reports that the number of attacks on troops and civilians rose by 25 per cent in 2012. The Taliban’s victories and the West’s weariness of the war have made the Taliban more confident that they can finally win the battle against foreign forces mainly represented by the United States.

The Taliban know the reason the United States is negotiating with them is that US politics demand an orderly withdrawal by the end of 2014. In this context, the Taliban’s approach is to completely disregard Karzai — the weakest player in the peace process. Moreover, the very process of Doha negotiations, if they take off, will eventually lead to his irrelevance.

So President Karzai is in a bind. He is wary of American intentions, which is why he does not want direct talks between the United States and the Taliban, and he needs some American forces to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 to shore up the successors he leaves behind.

The Taliban will not acquiesce to this arrangement. They know Afghan forces alone cannot hold them back. A recent US military video revealed that the US-led plan to more than double the size of Afghan forces to 352,000 has resulted in poor selection, severe loss of training quality and, eventually, battlefield defeats. The Afghan army is no match for motivated and hardened Taliban fighters.

The Americans, whose primary objective is to leave, know that an orderly withdrawal is not possible if Karzai is allowed to stop the Taliban entering into the political process. If Karzai tries to do so, American decision-makers will jettison him to get their troops home safely. For now American interests are met by keeping Karzai insecure to the extent that he is compelled to agree on locating sufficient American forces behind and sign the status of forces terms with the United States.

The United States and its allies fail to appreciate Afghanistan’s resistance to Westernisation. No foreign invasion has ever been able to hold Afghanistan. By providing an effective underground governance structure the Taliban maintain a psychological and cultural grip over the Afghan population. As Gerard Challand has said, ‘the seeds of their return were planted long ago’.

With American withdrawal coming by the end of 2014, most Afghanis now accept that the Taliban will outlast the US military and challenge the corrupt and fractured administration installed by the United States in Kabul. Eventually, the Taliban will win, but Afghanistan is set for a period of uncertainty in the interim.

Sajjad Ashraf is an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. He served as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Singapore 2004-2008.

 

[MooshMoosh]

Good job Pakistan. You did the right thing, have a peace treaty with the Taliban to keep both countries in peace after Taliban takes over after a civil war with ANA. Karzai is nothing, he doesn't control anything. You want to see him being a "real" president then see it when NATO withdraws.

America is abandoning Karzai

 

[pakistani342]

@Admin, I think this thread should be un-stickied -- it is pretty much dead