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| Afghanistan |
| Petraeus holds out prospect of reconciliation with Taliban |
| 2010-08-16 |
| [Dawn] General David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, held out the prospect on Sunday of eventual reconciliation with the Taliban, including negotiations with leaders with blood on their hands. "It doesn't mean that (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar is about to stroll down main street in Kabul anytime soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan," Petraeus said in an interview. But, he told NBC's "Meet the Press," there is "every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration and indeed some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation."Petraeus, who took command in Kabul following the sacking of his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal, famously exploited rifts within Iraq's Sunni insurgency to turn around a losing US-led war there. He now has less than a year to show results in Afghanistan where what he described as a "Pashtun insurgency" operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan has exposed the weakness of the government in Kabul and the NATO-led force backing it. Petraeus drew attention to vulnerabilities in the insurgency, noting it was "not some kind of monolithic Taliban enemy" but rather a syndicate of insurgent groups that are not subservient to each other. These include the Afghan Taliban in the south, the Haqqani network in the east, the Hezb-e-Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Pakistani Taliban, and smaller numbers of Al-Qaeda and Uzbek fighters. "What is interesting is that the Taliban leads from the rear, as we would say. The Taliban leads from Pakistan," the general said. "And by the way, the rank and file is just catching on to this."" We actually see discussions among them, chatter among them, conversation, wondering where their senior leaders are, and wondering why Mullah Omar hasn't set foot back in Afghanistan or even been heard from now in months and months and months.""But the senior leaders don't come in and share hardship and risk with their troopers on the ground, they send messages. They do it by cell phone, or what have you, and that is actually going to be a problem for them."Citing the case of a pregnant woman who was flogged and then killed, Petraeus suggested the Taliban's brutal treatment of civilians was also hurting it. "What they have done is really quite egregious, particularly in the context of the religion and in the context of the normal codes of conduct."Petraeus acknowledged, however, the daunting obstacles facing the NATO-led mission -- insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan, weak government in Kabul and an intimidated populace that will shift allegiances to survive. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 So the Taliban's punishment for enabling 9/11 will be political power in a new moderately islamofascistic Afghanistan rebuilt, subsidized and protected by Western taxpayers and military respectively. In other words they're getting protection money. Why should a soon-to-be nuclear Iran fear the consequences of enabling attacks on the continental US? With this step the US has given up on the very concept of deterrence. The (nuclear and conventional) security umbrella that is the foundation of America's alliances no longer exists. |
| Posted by: Shavilet Poodle4474 2010-08-16 18:59 |
| #2 This could be done in a way to match the standard Kit Carson Scouts recruitment : turn low-level Taliban on the leadership, and make regional agreements. It has worked all over the world, most recently as the Sons of Iraq program proved -- but with Obambi as President, I don't think that is going to be the outcome. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2010-08-16 18:47 |
| #1 Honorable |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-08-16 16:29 |