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| Afghanistan |
| UN asks Taliban to elect Afghan President |
| 2009-05-04 |
| [Iran Press TV Latest] The top UN official in Afghanistan has called on the Taliban to participate in the upcoming presidential election across the war-ravaged country. "So, Mahmoud! Who y'gonna vote for for potentate?" "Whoever Blinky sez. Infidel." Kai Eide, the head of the UN mission in Kabul, said Sunday the insurgents should participate in a campaign that formally starts on Thursday. "Call it reconciliation, or the peace process, whatever you want, but I believe that the opposition should know that those who want to take part in the election and respect the constitution should have an option to do that," Eide said, according to the British weekly the Observer. "And those who want to impose their own system on everybody else will do that." The developments come after a senior US official said that Washington was prepared to discuss the establishment of a political party for the Taliban insurgents in the war-torn country. They've got one. It's called the Tehrik-e-Taliban. Their platform says "none o' that democracy stuff." Their party chairman is Mullah Omar. Earlier William Wood, the outgoing US ambassador to Afghanistan, said the approval of such a party was part of a political strategy. "Insurgencies, like all wars ... end when there is an agreement, there is room for discussion on the formation of political parties running ... for elections," Wood said in late March. "I mean, look at Sri Lanka!" US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also recently touched on the issue, acknowledging that the US had a share in creating 'terrorist groups' such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "Let's remember here ... the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago We funded the Northern Alliance, too. They actually tossed the Sovs out. ... and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union," she said in a congressional hearing. She says that like it's a bad thing. However Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned US efforts to maintain direct ties with the Taliban without the involvement of the Afghan government. Najibullah was unhappy when the Sovs worked with Hekmatyar, too. After initial successes, the US and its NATO allies occupying Afghanistan have encountered a resurgent Taliban, bolstered partly by indiscriminate US attacks on the country's civilian population. More bolstered by open sanctuaries in Pakistan and the invovlement of Pak military trainers and logistics. In 2006, British army chiefs warned the then Prime Minister Tony Blair that they faced 'strategic failure' - army jargon for defeat - at the hands of the Taliban, and in March 2009, Major Sebastian Morley of Britain's elite SAS regiment resigned after returning from his Afghanistan mission. He accused the British Defense Minister of lying about the performance of the British army in Afghanistan and said, "it's just crazy to think we hold that ground or have any influence on what goes on beyond the bases in that country." In the face of militant threats, and the spread of Taliban military operations to neighboring Pakistan, the US and its allies have pledged to send more troops to Afghanistan, mainly by drawing them out of Iraq, and the new calls to include Taliban in the political process is seen as a response to the worsening situation for the occupation forces who do not want to have an open-ended war in Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 So the Taliban has a kind of ACORN working on their behalf. Mahmoud votes 30 times for the candidate of someone's choice. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2009-05-04 18:11 |