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What annoyed Obama about Mullah Omar
What annoyed Obama about Mullah Omar
What annoyed Obama about Mullah Omar - Indian Punchline
By M K Bhadrakumar – July 31, 2011
What really prompted US president Barack Obama to change his mind and to allow himself at the last minute to be persuaded by his military commanders to opt for the ’surge’ in Afghanistan in end-2009 is crucial to understanding the current status of the war and its likely future trajectory. Among Obama’s inner circle, Vice-president Joe Biden was reportedly pitching against the ’surge’ at that time. The former Afghan PM Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai has now revealed what prompted the US ’surge’. ASA is a credible source, having been close to Burhanuddin Rabbani, Rasul Sayyaf in the Mujahideen government (where he served as PM along with Ahmed Shah Massoud as Defence Minister before fleeing for Turkey where he lived in exile during the Taliban regime.)
That ASA was the intermediary between the Americans and the Taliban in 2009 shows the wheels-within-wheels, as it were. (ASA did his graduate studies in the US; he lived in exile in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.) According to ASA, the main sticking point between the US and Taliban in the 2009 talks was that Mullah Omar was stubbornly opposed to the US request to allow permanent military bases in Afghanistan in a post-settlement era. Taliban was willing to compromise on other issues but when it came to the US bases, Omar was tough as nail. He apparently took the stance that “not one metre” of Afghan soil could come under foreign occupation. Interestingly, Omar was willing to negotiate the date of US withdrawal from Afghanistan and was prepared to be flexible on the actual date of withdrawal, but the US troops simply had to vacate at some point.
What emerges is that the Pentagon top brass decided to bleed the Taliban for its ‘obduracy’ apropos the US military bases, based on a strategy to weaken them and somehow compel them to compromise on the question of the permanent US military bases. Thus was born the ’surge’ strategy — make one big push to degrade the Taliban militarily before negotiating. So, looking back, when the Anglo-American thesis of the ‘good Taliban-bad-Taliban’ was shoved down the throat of countries like India at the the London conference in January 2010, Richard Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton indeed had a wholesome game plan. Alas, Indian diplomacy has been naive and continued to be enthusiastic about the ’surge’.
It stands to reason that there was some major intelligence failure and Delhi had no clue to what was really going on. Maybe it isn’t late even today for someone to talk with interlocutors like ASA and try to piece it all together. Unless we know reliably well what transpired between the US and the Taliban, how would we comprehend what is going to unfold in the coming period? Unsurprisingly, the US continues to keep us ‘briefed’ selectively on a need-to-know basis. Special Representative Marc Grossman visited Delhi just once. He is setting out again on a regional tour that will take him to Pakistan and the Central Asian region (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan). India remains a bystander. All this happened primarily because our diplomats chose to work as the ‘B Team’ of the American embassy in Kabul through the past decade since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001 and we didn’t diversify our contacts with the Afghan political elites and other regional powers.
Posted in Military, Politics.
Tagged with Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, Marc Grossman, Richard Holbrooke, Taliban, US 'surge' in Afghanistan.
By M K Bhadrakumar – July 31, 2011
What annoyed Obama about Mullah Omar - Indian Punchline
By M K Bhadrakumar – July 31, 2011
What really prompted US president Barack Obama to change his mind and to allow himself at the last minute to be persuaded by his military commanders to opt for the ’surge’ in Afghanistan in end-2009 is crucial to understanding the current status of the war and its likely future trajectory. Among Obama’s inner circle, Vice-president Joe Biden was reportedly pitching against the ’surge’ at that time. The former Afghan PM Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai has now revealed what prompted the US ’surge’. ASA is a credible source, having been close to Burhanuddin Rabbani, Rasul Sayyaf in the Mujahideen government (where he served as PM along with Ahmed Shah Massoud as Defence Minister before fleeing for Turkey where he lived in exile during the Taliban regime.)
That ASA was the intermediary between the Americans and the Taliban in 2009 shows the wheels-within-wheels, as it were. (ASA did his graduate studies in the US; he lived in exile in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.) According to ASA, the main sticking point between the US and Taliban in the 2009 talks was that Mullah Omar was stubbornly opposed to the US request to allow permanent military bases in Afghanistan in a post-settlement era. Taliban was willing to compromise on other issues but when it came to the US bases, Omar was tough as nail. He apparently took the stance that “not one metre” of Afghan soil could come under foreign occupation. Interestingly, Omar was willing to negotiate the date of US withdrawal from Afghanistan and was prepared to be flexible on the actual date of withdrawal, but the US troops simply had to vacate at some point.
What emerges is that the Pentagon top brass decided to bleed the Taliban for its ‘obduracy’ apropos the US military bases, based on a strategy to weaken them and somehow compel them to compromise on the question of the permanent US military bases. Thus was born the ’surge’ strategy — make one big push to degrade the Taliban militarily before negotiating. So, looking back, when the Anglo-American thesis of the ‘good Taliban-bad-Taliban’ was shoved down the throat of countries like India at the the London conference in January 2010, Richard Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton indeed had a wholesome game plan. Alas, Indian diplomacy has been naive and continued to be enthusiastic about the ’surge’.
It stands to reason that there was some major intelligence failure and Delhi had no clue to what was really going on. Maybe it isn’t late even today for someone to talk with interlocutors like ASA and try to piece it all together. Unless we know reliably well what transpired between the US and the Taliban, how would we comprehend what is going to unfold in the coming period? Unsurprisingly, the US continues to keep us ‘briefed’ selectively on a need-to-know basis. Special Representative Marc Grossman visited Delhi just once. He is setting out again on a regional tour that will take him to Pakistan and the Central Asian region (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan). India remains a bystander. All this happened primarily because our diplomats chose to work as the ‘B Team’ of the American embassy in Kabul through the past decade since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001 and we didn’t diversify our contacts with the Afghan political elites and other regional powers.
Posted in Military, Politics.
Tagged with Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, Marc Grossman, Richard Holbrooke, Taliban, US 'surge' in Afghanistan.
By M K Bhadrakumar – July 31, 2011
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