Posted on 10/06/2010 2:57:20 PM PDT by Eyes Unclouded
KABUL—Afghan officials, retired Pakistani security chiefs and former Taliban leaders are meeting in Kabul, trying to find ways to open peace talks with the insurgents—possibly by dropping key Western-backed conditions to such a reconciliation. The meetings, sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and held Tuesday and Wednesday in Kabul's luxurious Serena Hotel, don't involve insurgents. The Taliban's position is to refuse all peace contacts as long as U.S.-led international forces remain in the country. President Hamid Karzai's aides and other officials said, however, that the Afghan government would be ready to abandon some previously announced "red lines," such as a demand that the Taliban recognize the Afghan constitution and lay down arms, in an attempt to kick start substantive negotiations. "Peace means that all the conditions of one side cannot be accepted, and both sides must compromise," explained Mr. Karzai's Islamic affairs adviser, Nematullah Shahrani. In return for such government concessions, he said, the Taliban would be expected to abandon their demand for the immediate departure of all foreign forces as a precondition for talks.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Bring them in on a gurney.
There is nothing called the ‘moderate Taliban’
The Times of India
Apr 12, 2009, 12.44am IST
If necessity is the mother of invention then politics is often the father. Barack Obama has invented a phrase that did not exist on January 20, the day he became president. Anxious to win a war through the treasury rather than the Pentagon, he has discovered something called the “moderate Taliban” in Afghanistan. Joe Biden, his vice president, has found the mathematical coordinates of this oxymoron: only 5% of the Taliban are “extremists”.
Welcome to Obama’s first big mistake.
The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not simply against some bearded men and beardless boys who have been turned into suicide missionaries. The critical conflict is against the ideology of a chauvinistic theocracy that seeks to remould the Muslim world into a regressive region from which it can assault every aspect of modernity, whether that be in political space or the social sphere.
Washington has a single dimension definition of “moderate”: anyone who stops an active, immediate war against the US is a “moderate”. Let me introduce him to a couple of “moderate Taliban”. They are now world famous, having been on every national and international news channel these past few days, stars of a video clip from Swat. Two of them had pinned down a 17-year-old girl called Chand Bibi, while a third, his face shrouded, lashed her with a whip 37 times on suspicion of being seen with a man who was not her father or brother.
Obama should record the screams of Chand Bibi and play them to his daughters as the “moderate” music to which he wants to dance in his Afghan war.
These Taliban are “moderate” by the norms of the Obama Doctrine: they have come to a deal with America through Islamabad. Pakistani troops are not engaged in their medieval haven, nor are American Drones bombing their homes. All that remains, one presumes, is that they are placed on the Pentagon payroll as insurance of their ceasefire.
Perhaps, in their desperate search for moderation, Obama and Islamabad will promote the denial being manipulated into public discourse. The unbearable Swat-lashing video is now described as fake. It would be nice to know the names of the actors who played such a convincing part in the filming of this ‘fake’. Chand Bibi has “denied” any such incident. Sure: but was any doctor sent to check the scars?
Such compromise with ‘moderation’ has also taken place next door, in Afghanistan, under the watchful eye of American ally Hamid Karzai. He has just signed a family law bill which compels Afghan women to take permission from their husbands before going to a doctor, seeking education, or getting a job. The husband has become complete master of the bedroom. Custody of children can only go to fathers or grandfathers; women have no rights. A member of Afghanistan’s upper house, Senator Humaira Namati, has called this law “worse than during the Taliban (government). Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam”. It makes no difference to the Taliban, of course, that the Quran expressly forbids Muslim men from forcing decisions on their wives “against their will”. Karzai’s justification is the usual one: politics. He wanted the support of theocrats in the election scheduled for August this year. Under pressure, there is talk of a review but no one is sure what that means.
If it’s democracy, it must be “moderate”, right?
One can understand a post-Iraq America’s reluctance towards wars that seem straight out of Kipling. But we in the region have to live with the political consequences of superpower intervention, and the casual legitimacy that Obama is offering to a destructive ideology will create blowback that spreads far beyond the geography of “Afpak”.
Benazir Bhutto and the ISI did not create the Taliban in the winter of 1994 for war against America. Its purpose was to defeat fractious Afghan warlords, and establish a totalitarian regime that would equate Afghanistan’s strategic interests to Pakistan’s. The ISI conceived an “Afpak” long before the idea reached the outer rim of Washington’s thinking. Pakistan worked assiduously to widen the Taliban’s legitimacy and would have drawn America into the fold through the oil-pipeline siren song if Osama bin Laden had not blown every plan apart. In some essentials, things have not changed. Pakistan’s interests still lie in a pro-Islamabad Taliban regime in Kabul. The “moderation” theory is a ploy to provide war-weary America with an exit point. India’s anxieties will be offered a smile in public and a shrug in private.
History is uncomfortable with neat closures. Neither the Taliban nor Pakistan are what they were in 1994: the former
is much stronger, the latter substantially weaker. The fall of Kabul to the Taliban this time could be a curtain raiser to the siege of Islamabad.
There is nothing called a moderate lash, or backlash, President Obama.
Karzai knows he’s camel feed the minute we leave.
Yea peace,.....until they fight again.
This one is on Obama.
Barack HUSSEIN Obama (BHO) didn’t specifically event that phrase “moderate Taliban”. It was invented way before BHO’s time as POTUS. BHO is continuing the tradition long established before him by others in the West. George W Bush kept telling us how peaceful Islam is - maybe he was thinking of the U.S. ally Saudi Arabia? Every POTUS & US administration since Jimmy Carter has continued to negotiate with the Islamic regime in Iran (and their so-called moderate elements) - mostly behind the scenes.
Since 9/11, we’ve been constantly hearing about the differentiation between ‘moderate’ and ‘radical/extremist/political/fundamentalists’ Islam! Any Islamic group perceived as appearing western-friendly (even only superficially) is conveniently labelled as ‘moderate’.
All this is largely about political expediency by the West. It eventually will come back to bite us in the West.
event = invent
Saudi Arabia is no ally of ours, they are funding Mosques of hate across the world.
“Since 9/11, we’ve been constantly hearing about the differentiation between ‘moderate’ and ‘radical/extremist/political/fundamentalists’ Islam! Any Islamic group perceived as appearing western-friendly (even only superficially) is conveniently labelled as ‘moderate’.”
Exactly, if we do not change the plan we will eventually lose this war. People in the Middle East that I have spoken to tell me they had never heard of “moderate” Islam. They said the West invented that term, and they laugh at the foolishness of it.
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