Surprisingly good piece in the New Yorker.
The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks Or not so secret, I guess.
with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several people briefed about the talks told me last week. The discussions are continuing; they are of an exploratory nature and do not yet amount to a peace negotiation.
Mullah Omar is not a participant in the preliminary talks. He does not attend even secret meetings of underground Taliban leadership councils in Pakistani safe houses. When he does speak, he does so obliquely, via cassette tapes. Otherwise he would be pushing up poppies by now.
One purpose of the talks initiated by the Obama Administration, therefore, is to assess which figures in the Taliban's leadership, if any, might be willing to engage in formal Afghan peace negotiations, and under what conditions. Is anybody in charge? There or here?
The pursuit of peace, however, can be just as risky as the prosecution of war. If mismanaged, full-blown Afghan peace talks might ignite a civil war along ethnic lines. Also, the Taliban and their historical benefactors in Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, the spy agency directed by the Pakistani military, have an almost unblemished record of overreaching in Afghan affairs, and there is no reason to think that their habits would change if serious negotiations unfolded. And, even under the best of circumstances, an Afghan peace process would most likely mirror the present character of the war: a slow, complicated, and deathly grind, atomized and menaced by interference from neighboring governments--not just Pakistan's but also those of Iran, India, Russia, Uzbekistan, and China. rtwt
#3
In my humble opinion.... the Obama administration and it's feckless US State Department are pushing billions of USD toward AFG and PAK while bending over smartly for the buggering, in order to extricate the US, if only partially before the 2012 election run-up. As a result, I doubt the Taliban Spring Offensive will amount to much as they use the time to their strategic advantage.
#1
Remembering Afghanistans hopeful past only makes its present misery seem more tragic. But it is important to know that disorder, terrorism, and violence against schools that educate girls are not inevitable. I want to show Afghanistans youth of today how their parents and grandparents really lived.
Gee. We ought to try to figure out what happened and not let it happen ever again.
#2
Didn't things in that area take a serious turn for the worse around 700AD or so?
Posted by: abu do you love ||
02/19/2011 3:24 Comments ||
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#3
Well, there was Genghiz Khan in 1221, Tamerlane in 1381, the Roosians in 1979, cities razed time & again, pyramids of human skulls, etc. The country has gone from horrible to worse & back again. No wonder they're nuts.
#4
Let the PLA have it. Denies strategic depth to the idiots, worries the Russ, and disperses the forces of the ever awesome Peoples Liberation Army-Navy-Air Force and discount goods centre.
Posted by: Goldies Every Damn Where ||
02/19/2011 7:05 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
