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U.S. seeks to negotiate its way out of Afghanistan
U.S. seeks to negotiate its way out of Afghanistan - thestar.com
U.S. seeks to negotiate its way out of Afghanistan
Published 1 hour 16 minutes ago Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a high-ranking Taliban defector on Afghanistan High Peace Council, says are raising new obstacles to peace with the Taliban despite reports the Obama administration is eager to negotiate with the insurgents.
PAUL WATSON/TORONTO STAR
By Paul Watson Star Columnist
MARZAR-I-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN—Solutions have an unsettling habit of breeding more problems in Afghanistan and the push to talk peace with the Taliban is triggering threats of a new conflict between old Afghan enemies.
The U.S. is bleeding cash here at the rate of some $10 billion a month, money that’s getting harder to come by as the Obama administration struggles to avert a catastrophic debt crisis at home.
Canadian combat troops are leaving. The British are also anxious to get out. Afghans, who are supposed to take up the slack, are increasingly angry at foreign bombing raids on their villages, runaway government corruption, injustice and haphazard economic development.
The Taliban’s extraordinary resilience, including the recent assassinations of Afghan security force commanders and political leaders, underlines a conclusion most people here reached long ago: this war, in its 10th year, can’t end the insurgency.
So, it seems, the Americans hope to negotiate their way out. They’ve reportedly even put out word that they’re willing to meet with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, whom the U.S. has long wanted dead.
After almost a decade of watching foreign powers bungle the rebuilding of Afghanistan, which was largely at peace after the Taliban’s leadership fled to Pakistan in late 2001, the extremist mullahs’ northern rivals are getting nervous.
They fear the U.S. is going to repeat past mistakes, put its interests above Afghans’ and do a deal with the Taliban that sells out the majority of this country’s people.
“We will witness another type of insecurity and chaos in Afghanistan,” warned Sayed Fazel Sancharaki, a leading opposition politician.
“Not only in the northern parts, but in all parts of Afghanistan, people will rise up. After 10 years, they have an idea about democratic values, civic rights and such. They’ve got used to all this, so going back to the Taliban is going back to zero in a way.”
The most radical opposition to peace talks comes from Amrullah Saleh, former chief of Afghan intelligence, and opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah.
Both are trying to block President Hamid Karzai’s current efforts to reach out to the Taliban, which foreign allies such as the U.S., Germany and Britain reportedly are working to advance through secret channels.
Sancharaki, a senior member of a political alliance headed by Abdullah, who was once Karzai’s foreign minister, takes a slightly more moderate position on dialogue with the Taliban.
He is no rabble-rouser. He chooses his words with the care of a diplomat, and looks the part in a crisp, white shalwar kameez under a well-tailored grey jacket.
The front room where he receives guests at him home is tastefully appointed with a Persian-style silk carpet, fashionable light fixtures, a large screen TV and a bouquet of fanned peacock feathers and red roses.
He isn’t against talking to the Taliban. He can even imagine making peace with them. But like a growing number of Afghans, Sancharaki doubts that a corrupt government, and foreign allies with their own interests at stake, will do what’s right for Afghanistan.
Tensions, and distrust, are running high following a string of Taliban assassinations targeting high-ranking Afghan security officials such as General Mohammad Daud Daud, the north’s powerful police chief, and the head of Kandahar’s provincial police, Khan Mohammad Mujaheed.
Insurgent death squads killed at least 140 government officials in 2010, according to a joint March report by the United Nations and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
The Taliban’s escalating dirty war moved Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor, whom many here see as a virtual king of the north, visited Kabul this week to spend several days meeting with Karzai, other Afghan leaders and Western diplomats.
Intelligence reports have alerted Atta that around 20 Taliban assassins are deployed in and around Mazar to kill him, said Abdul Saboor Saboor, a former general in the Northern Alliance. The force disarmed after the Taliban regime collapsed in late 2001.
Saboor said Atta had an urgent weekend meeting with Karzai, a long-time rival, to draw a clear line: He and his allies won’t stand by quietly while the Taliban methodically picks them off.
“If northerners see their interests at risk, I assure you they will fight for their rights — even with a knife,” Saboor said calmly. “If you squeeze just an ant, even it will bite as hard as it can to resist you.”
He graduated from Afghanistan’s military academy 32 years ago, and has served Soviet-backed Communists as well as legendary North Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, who Al Qaeda assassinated two days before launching the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S.
Saboor knows Afghanistan’s labyrinthine politics almost as well as he understands its seemingly endless wars. He is convinced that U.S.-led efforts to negotiate with the Taliban are “a political game” benefiting the insurgents’ main backers, Pakistan.
He estimates the Taliban have 3,000 fighters across the northern provinces, and if he’s right, an insurgency born among southern Pashtuns is gaining significant traction far from its main bases.
Taliban fighters are plotting underground in Mazar, but operate more freely just 25 kms from the region’s biggest, and most strategically important city, Saboor said.
The Taliban have built an organized front in Balkh district, just northwest of Mazar, and in the western districts of Charbolak, Chemtal and Shulgara, Saboor said.
They’ve formed a highly mobile menace stretched north to south across 100 kilometres, far from the bulk of U.S., Canadian and British troops that have hammered the Taliban in the south.
“Not only have the Americans not won the war,” Saboor added, “they have lost.”
Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a Taliban defector who was deputy minister of higher education when the mullahs ruled from Kabul, also has little faith in American talk of reconciling with the insurgents.
Now a member of the High Peace Council that Karzai set up last fall to reach out to the Taliban, Rahmani says the U.S. is not removing obstacles to peace, but raising new ones.
In one long-standing demand, the Taliban wants its leaders’ names removed from a UN Security Council blacklist, which bans them from travelling and freezes their assets.
With support from foreign allies, Karzai says there can be reconciliation with Talibs who renounce violence, cut ties with terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and abide by the Afghan constitution.
“There would be no need to change the current constitution,” said Rahmani, an Islamic scholar. “The Afghan constitution supports Islam. The second article states that all the laws of Afghanistan are based on Islamic law and Islamic belief.”
The Taliban, whose often brutal regime imposed severe restrictions on women and girls, wouldn’t threaten their rights if the war ends, Rahmani insisted.
Calling himself “one of the strictest members of the Taliban movement,” Rahmani said when he was in government he asked Mullah Omar for permission to allow women whose medical studies had been interrupted to complete their courses.
“He authorized an extensive budget — so much money,” Rahmani said. “The 200 women all studied and finished. I have signed most of their certificates.”
Rahmani testily offered a more personal example to prove that Talibs aren’t anti-women: He approved his son’s marriage to the granddaughter of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a key insurgent leader.
His Hezb-i-Islami fighters are believed responsible for some of the most vicious insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, including at least one attempt to assassinate Karzai. The U.S. has declared Hekmatyar “a global terrorist.”
“My son is a medical doctor and Hekmatyar’s daughter is too,” Rahmani said. “If I were against women, why would I have married a woman medical doctor to my son?”
Acknowledging mistakes, he said the Talibs didn’t know how to run a proper administration, with a structured legal system. But at least their government was not as corrupt and weak as Karzai’s, Rahmani added.
U.S. seeks to negotiate its way out of Afghanistan
Published 1 hour 16 minutes ago Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a high-ranking Taliban defector on Afghanistan High Peace Council, says are raising new obstacles to peace with the Taliban despite reports the Obama administration is eager to negotiate with the insurgents.
PAUL WATSON/TORONTO STAR
By Paul Watson Star Columnist MARZAR-I-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN—Solutions have an unsettling habit of breeding more problems in Afghanistan and the push to talk peace with the Taliban is triggering threats of a new conflict between old Afghan enemies.
The U.S. is bleeding cash here at the rate of some $10 billion a month, money that’s getting harder to come by as the Obama administration struggles to avert a catastrophic debt crisis at home.
Canadian combat troops are leaving. The British are also anxious to get out. Afghans, who are supposed to take up the slack, are increasingly angry at foreign bombing raids on their villages, runaway government corruption, injustice and haphazard economic development.
The Taliban’s extraordinary resilience, including the recent assassinations of Afghan security force commanders and political leaders, underlines a conclusion most people here reached long ago: this war, in its 10th year, can’t end the insurgency.
So, it seems, the Americans hope to negotiate their way out. They’ve reportedly even put out word that they’re willing to meet with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, whom the U.S. has long wanted dead.
After almost a decade of watching foreign powers bungle the rebuilding of Afghanistan, which was largely at peace after the Taliban’s leadership fled to Pakistan in late 2001, the extremist mullahs’ northern rivals are getting nervous.
They fear the U.S. is going to repeat past mistakes, put its interests above Afghans’ and do a deal with the Taliban that sells out the majority of this country’s people.
“We will witness another type of insecurity and chaos in Afghanistan,” warned Sayed Fazel Sancharaki, a leading opposition politician.
“Not only in the northern parts, but in all parts of Afghanistan, people will rise up. After 10 years, they have an idea about democratic values, civic rights and such. They’ve got used to all this, so going back to the Taliban is going back to zero in a way.”
The most radical opposition to peace talks comes from Amrullah Saleh, former chief of Afghan intelligence, and opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah.
Both are trying to block President Hamid Karzai’s current efforts to reach out to the Taliban, which foreign allies such as the U.S., Germany and Britain reportedly are working to advance through secret channels.
Sancharaki, a senior member of a political alliance headed by Abdullah, who was once Karzai’s foreign minister, takes a slightly more moderate position on dialogue with the Taliban.
He is no rabble-rouser. He chooses his words with the care of a diplomat, and looks the part in a crisp, white shalwar kameez under a well-tailored grey jacket.
The front room where he receives guests at him home is tastefully appointed with a Persian-style silk carpet, fashionable light fixtures, a large screen TV and a bouquet of fanned peacock feathers and red roses.
He isn’t against talking to the Taliban. He can even imagine making peace with them. But like a growing number of Afghans, Sancharaki doubts that a corrupt government, and foreign allies with their own interests at stake, will do what’s right for Afghanistan.
Tensions, and distrust, are running high following a string of Taliban assassinations targeting high-ranking Afghan security officials such as General Mohammad Daud Daud, the north’s powerful police chief, and the head of Kandahar’s provincial police, Khan Mohammad Mujaheed.
Insurgent death squads killed at least 140 government officials in 2010, according to a joint March report by the United Nations and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
The Taliban’s escalating dirty war moved Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor, whom many here see as a virtual king of the north, visited Kabul this week to spend several days meeting with Karzai, other Afghan leaders and Western diplomats.
Intelligence reports have alerted Atta that around 20 Taliban assassins are deployed in and around Mazar to kill him, said Abdul Saboor Saboor, a former general in the Northern Alliance. The force disarmed after the Taliban regime collapsed in late 2001.
Saboor said Atta had an urgent weekend meeting with Karzai, a long-time rival, to draw a clear line: He and his allies won’t stand by quietly while the Taliban methodically picks them off.
“If northerners see their interests at risk, I assure you they will fight for their rights — even with a knife,” Saboor said calmly. “If you squeeze just an ant, even it will bite as hard as it can to resist you.”
He graduated from Afghanistan’s military academy 32 years ago, and has served Soviet-backed Communists as well as legendary North Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, who Al Qaeda assassinated two days before launching the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S.
Saboor knows Afghanistan’s labyrinthine politics almost as well as he understands its seemingly endless wars. He is convinced that U.S.-led efforts to negotiate with the Taliban are “a political game” benefiting the insurgents’ main backers, Pakistan.
He estimates the Taliban have 3,000 fighters across the northern provinces, and if he’s right, an insurgency born among southern Pashtuns is gaining significant traction far from its main bases.
Taliban fighters are plotting underground in Mazar, but operate more freely just 25 kms from the region’s biggest, and most strategically important city, Saboor said.
The Taliban have built an organized front in Balkh district, just northwest of Mazar, and in the western districts of Charbolak, Chemtal and Shulgara, Saboor said.
They’ve formed a highly mobile menace stretched north to south across 100 kilometres, far from the bulk of U.S., Canadian and British troops that have hammered the Taliban in the south.
“Not only have the Americans not won the war,” Saboor added, “they have lost.”
Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a Taliban defector who was deputy minister of higher education when the mullahs ruled from Kabul, also has little faith in American talk of reconciling with the insurgents.
Now a member of the High Peace Council that Karzai set up last fall to reach out to the Taliban, Rahmani says the U.S. is not removing obstacles to peace, but raising new ones.
In one long-standing demand, the Taliban wants its leaders’ names removed from a UN Security Council blacklist, which bans them from travelling and freezes their assets.
With support from foreign allies, Karzai says there can be reconciliation with Talibs who renounce violence, cut ties with terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and abide by the Afghan constitution.
“There would be no need to change the current constitution,” said Rahmani, an Islamic scholar. “The Afghan constitution supports Islam. The second article states that all the laws of Afghanistan are based on Islamic law and Islamic belief.”
The Taliban, whose often brutal regime imposed severe restrictions on women and girls, wouldn’t threaten their rights if the war ends, Rahmani insisted.
Calling himself “one of the strictest members of the Taliban movement,” Rahmani said when he was in government he asked Mullah Omar for permission to allow women whose medical studies had been interrupted to complete their courses.
“He authorized an extensive budget — so much money,” Rahmani said. “The 200 women all studied and finished. I have signed most of their certificates.”
Rahmani testily offered a more personal example to prove that Talibs aren’t anti-women: He approved his son’s marriage to the granddaughter of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a key insurgent leader.
His Hezb-i-Islami fighters are believed responsible for some of the most vicious insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, including at least one attempt to assassinate Karzai. The U.S. has declared Hekmatyar “a global terrorist.”
“My son is a medical doctor and Hekmatyar’s daughter is too,” Rahmani said. “If I were against women, why would I have married a woman medical doctor to my son?”
Acknowledging mistakes, he said the Talibs didn’t know how to run a proper administration, with a structured legal system. But at least their government was not as corrupt and weak as Karzai’s, Rahmani added.
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