Taliban no more terrorists?

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
81

Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

A taleban participating/led govt in Kabul - forget what US or Pakistan desire. is there any credible assessment of what Afghan people desire and how they are disposed towads taleban?

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

[RIGHT]
طالبان سے سياسی مفاہمت کے حوالے سے امريکی حکومت کا موقف واضح اور مستقل ہے۔ يہ موقف ايک اصول اور ضابطہ کار کے عين مطابق ہے۔ اس ضمن ميں مختلف اشخاص کی انفرادی حيثيت اور گروہوں کی اہميت نہيں ہے۔

جیسا کہ سيکر ٹری کلنٹن نے کل کہا تھا کہ

" يہ عمل ابھی ابتدائ مراحل میں ہے۔ قطر میں طالبان کا سياسی دفتر کھولنے کے ليے تائيد اور حمايت حاصل ہے ليکن اس بارے ميں ابھی کوئ حتمی فيصلہ نہیں ہوا۔"

جيسا کہ میں نے اپنی پچھلی پوسٹنگ ميں ذکر کیا ہے کہ امريکہ افغان قيادت کے زير اثر مفاہمت اور بحالی کے ايسے عمل کی حمايت کرتا ہے جس کا مقصد ان عناصر کو دوبارہ معاشرے ميں شامل کرنا ہے جو تشدد کو ترک کريں، القائدہ اور ان سے ملحق گروہوں سے تعلقات کو ختم کريں اور افغان آئين کے تحت زندگی گزارنے کو ترجيح

ديں جس ميں افغان مردوں اور عورتوں کے حقوق کا تحفظ شامل ہے۔

ذوالفقار – ڈيجيٹل آؤٹ ريچ ٹيم – يو ايس اسٹيٹ ڈيپارٹمينٹ

[EMAIL=“[email protected]”][email protected]

www.state.gov

83

Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

That is polite way of saying that 'after weer turned him into an even bigger monster, he is your problem now Karzai'

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?


The ones who know about Afghanistan know what they desire, others are only trying push their own desire on the country.

85

Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

Well I guess that clearly shows that people joyful for the removal of Mullah Omar’s name did not know the truth.

Bad news for some of us (wanting the US to fail in Afghanistan) = (wanting Taliban to return) = (making distinction between Pakistani and Afghan Taliban).

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

Americans really don't care about Karzai or Taliban or Afghanistan. Once their objectives are achieved they will leave the country in mess just like they did it after USSR left.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?


I will add more = People wanting justice to prevail = people wanting locals to win against foreign invasion.

similarly some people think US is always right = its okay to invade wherever they want = its okay to throw justice in dust.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

Keeping in view how the Americans have been begging the taleban for negotiations, here’s the formal victory message from the taleban!

http://www.shahamat-english.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14478:formal-proclamation-of-islamic-emirates-victory&catid=4:statements&Itemid=4

Formal proclamation of Islamic Emirate’s victory

Sunday, 15 January 2012 07:28 -

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The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan showed it openly to the world that it is a well-organized political power besides being a military power. It has ruled the country successfully and preserves the right and might of each and every decision of the country. It can neither accept external orders nor can it come under any one’s pressure. It is proved to the world that the Islamic Emirate is deeply rooted internally in the Afghan nation and externally in the whole Islamic ummah. **Militarily successful resistance against a gigantic international alliance, full presence on the whole soil and overall perseverance are the signs and secrets of the Islamic Emirate.
**
**The invading countries of Afghanistan are compelled to review their policies by looking into the military and political determination, unity, organization and unshakeable stance of the Islamic Emirate.
**
**A year ago a European diplomat said to an envoy of the Islamic Emirate:
**
**“For a complete decade we were deceived by America and Karzai saying that a neighboring country is supervising the Taliban and can prepare them for anything. Therefore we were giving every kind of prerogatives to the authorities of that neighboring country. Although they endangered their country for this purpose but they did not succeed. If they could do something, they would have done it for the sake of these privileges. Now the world has realized that the claims of Karzai and America were only a kind of propaganda to deceive the nations worldwide. The Afghans and Taliban are not a trivial phenomenon but an ideological and national movement which should be acknowledged as a political fact.
**
**It is but sheer determination, religious and ideological adherence and unequalled sacrifices displayed by true Afghan Mujahid nation for the last decade that today regional and world powers are after to reach mutual understanding about the country.
**
**Today somewhere in the world if the name of the Islamic Emirate is carved and a flag with ‘Kalma tayyebaa’ (holy word of creedal testimony) is wavered on the top; it is actually the formal proclamation of the success of resistance against the incursion.
**
The contractors of the international invasion can no more deceive the nation by their baseless talks. **They used the word ‘peace’ as a propaganda fragment to deceive the people. But today as their guardians and supporters are fed up militarily and logistically with this war and are planning for retreat, they are giving contradictory statements which show their complete confusion and embarrassment. Sometime they say that the office of the Islamic Emirate should be opened in some other country. Another time they say they have no part in this.
**
The choice of Qatar for the inauguration of formal office shows the political deliberation of the Islamic Emirate. If this initiative had been taken in some neighboring country, it would have been another chance of every day propaganda for Karzai administration. If the office was inaugurated in Saudi Arabia, someone else would have suspected it because of the close bilateral relations of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And finally Turkey could not have been considered an ideal place for the sovereignty and prestige of this office because of its membership of the NATO alliance.

But Qatar having balance relations with all sides and a prestigious status in the Islamic world is the most appropriate place for this kind of office.
Although none of the Muslim countries is interested in opposing the Islamic Emirate, due to the sympathy of the masses in the Muslim world with Islamic Emirate. Even if the governments or the authorities might not be interested, they may take a careful stance on this for the sake of their people.
Now the military, political and national efficiency of the Islamic Emirate is evident, perhaps no one will benefit from the mere enmity of the Islamic Emirate. Everyone concerned should choose the rational and logical path of solving issues with Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. If the present invaders had chosen a lucid path instead of incursion, they would not have faced such a huge personnel and financial loss in Afghanistan.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

Afghanistan has several "locals". Giving preference to one set of "locals" (Taliban) is only a matter of priority by some.

But do remember that (wanting US to fail in Afgh) = (wanting a Taliban government in Afgh).
There is no denying that.

90

Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

America never had issues with Taliban's anti-Islamic archaic rule. It's concern was more about their support to Qaeda.
Taliban may return to Afghanistan with support from the US. American people do not want to pump in more dollars in this war.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

@Captain1 - you are making statements like "good is better than bad". It is very difficult to get a specific point across when you spout of motherhood, apple pie and frankincense!

Taleban seems more capable of controlling Afghanistan than Karzai & company. But that comes with a cost - which is Taleban is capable of pushing extremist agenda in legislation & justice.

USA's efforts to create an alternative to them have been sabotaged by Pakistan's ISI games (which incidently has backfired on themselves as well but that is a different story), Karzai's incompetence + corruption and NATO/USA policy mistakes.

SO guess now the time to evaluate the + / - of Taleban is essential. While doing so, it would also be relevant to understand what people in Afghanistan feel about them now.

Saying people who know, know...! that is like what the old ISI director used to spout of!

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

When Pakistan, UAE and Saudia were supporting the taleban (they were evil), and now when Americans are doing the same they are being pragmatic.

What is the guarantee that Alqaeda will not return to Afghanistan when Americans leave? Whats the difference in the ideology between the two?

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

This is where the priorities lie. Many people hate/dislike US. But just because they dislike US, shouldn't mean they oppose each and every action of it. Instead the cost has to be judged. The cost of failure of US in Afgh is return of Taliban.
Is this the price one willing to pay for US failure in Afgh?

My answer is: NO. I would like to see US fail but not if it results in return of fasaadi anti-Islam archaic Taliban.
Others would rather say: YES. We would like to see US fail even if it means Taliban control in Afgh.

94

Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

Even at that time the US was not against Taliban government. US itself might have recognized Taliban government if it had acquired the whole of Afghanistan.

[quote]
What is the guarantee that Alqaeda will not return to Afghanistan when Americans leave? Whats the difference in the ideology between the two?
[/QUOTE]

I don't know the guarantee. That's what US negotiators would like to get from Taliban representatives.

There is no difference in ideology. But there is difference in short term goals. Taliban want to start from attacking and occupying Afgh and then Pak. While Qaeda wants to attack and kill Americans and other Western targets.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

Locals are locals, no matter what ethnic glasses you put on and what sectarianism makes you think.


As if US came to region to get rid of extremism in Afghanistan, US wanting to negotiate and bring them in power is clear indication that US doesn't care whether Taliban are extremists or not. CIA will play for US interests and ISI will play for Pakistan's interests, you want Pakistan to not look after its interests, really?

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

All locals are not the same in Afghanistan. There are several ethnic people living there. This is why there was conflict between Pashtun Taliban and others.
The fight between Taliban and others was not between "Islamic" Taliban and others, rather it was between Pashtuns and others. Otherwise many Tajiks are as much radically fanatic as Taliban.

So it is simplistic to say that "locals are locals", and that ALL "locals" are fighting foreigners.

In reality "locals minus Pashtuns" are in government presently and support the US.
Pashtun locals, who form majority Taliban movement, are outside the government.

Your implication is that Pashtun locals should be given preference over other locals of Afghanistan, even if they bring back the anti-Islamic Taliban mafia in power.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

Of course those in current government are "locals" too, I don't care what ethnics are supporting or opposing who, fact is MAJORITY of Afghanistan is out of control of current government while it was under control in Taliban, so one can safely state that Taliban are/were supported by majority.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2809068.ece

West’s romancing of the Taliban

*People of Afghanistan will pay the price for the West’s looming deal with the Islamic Emirate it destroyed after 9/11.

In the spring of 1839, the extraordinary Indian adventurer and spy, Mohan Lal Kashmiri, engineered one of the greatest intelligence coups of the 19th century: using nothing more lethal than cash and intrigue, he brought about the fall of Kandahar and secured the Afghan throne for Imperial Britain’s chosen client, Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk.
*
Less than three years later, in the bitter winter of 1842, Kashmiri found himself working undercover in insurgent-held Kabul, seeking to ransom the remnants of his masters’ once-magnificent army — children, women and men at threat of being sold as slaves in Central Asia.For decades after, imperial historians agonised over the Afghan debacle of 1842, using tropes that still colour discourse on the country: religious fanaticism; treachery of native rulers; savagery of the tribal culture; primitiveness of its civilisation.

In a June 1842 paper, authored for the attention of the Governor-General in New Delhi, Kashmiri offered a simpler explanation. Britain’s easy victory in Kandahar and Kabul, he recorded, persuaded commanders that “there was no necessity for wearing longer the airy garb of political civilities and promises.” He concluded: “there are, in fact, such numerous instances of violating our commitments and deceiving the people in our political proceedings, within what I am acquainted with, that it would be hard to assemble them in one place.

”**Eleven years ago, the United States went to war in Afghanistan, promising to free its people from a despotic Islamist regime. President George Bush never delivered on his promises of reconstruction. Afghanistan received a fraction of the aid handed out to less-troubled Kosovo and Bosnia, a 2003 RAND corporation study demonstrated, let alone post-Second World War Japan or West Germany. Neoconservatives hostile to big government dominated the development agenda; the war in Iraq sucked away desperately-needed troops.****Now, as first revealed by *The Hindu last year, even the political promise is vanishing: the U.S. is spearheading an effort to make peace with the Islamists it promised to free Afghanistan from.

Figures like the northern warlord Rashid Dostum, former Afghan intelligence chief Amarullah Saleh and former vice-president Zia Massoud, have been lobbying against the looming deal with the Taliban — but the tide of western opinion seems against them.
******In capitals across Europe and in the U.S., leaders have been persuaded that an end to the war in Afghanistan must mean reconciliation with the Taliban — cast by a growing phalanx of apologists as representatives of a culturally legitimate religious-nationalist tradition.
**
The part of the story that is strangely absent from history-telling today is this: **until the events of 9/11, the U.S. was engaged in precisely the same process of reconciliation that is being marketed today.

The beginning **Muhammad Najibullah Ahmadzai’s last minutes were the first of Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate, the Taliban’s short-lived state. Early on September 27, 1996, Afghanistan’s former President was dragged out of the United Nations compound where he had taken sanctuary. He was beaten, then castrated; his bloodied body was dragged behind a truck before being hung on a traffic light for public display.
**
The President’s last visitors included Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Panjshir-region warlord who would himself be assassinated on the eve of 9/11. Massoud, for decades a bitter adversary of Najibullah, offered to help him escape, an offer that demonstrated courage and decency.
**
Glyn Davies, the U.S. State Department’s spokesperson, demonstrated neither when he was asked about Najbullah’s murder a few hours later. The barbaric killing, he said, was merely “regrettable.” Mr. Davies proceed to explain that he found “nothing objectionable” in the laws of the new Islamic Emirate; these, he suggested, were “anti-modern”, not “anti-western” and, therefore, presumably legitimate.

He hoped the Taliban would “form a representative interim government that can begin the process of reconciliation nationwide.”**From 1994, the administration of President Bill Clinton had sought just this outcome. The story had something to do with oil.

**The scholar and journalist, Ahmad Rashid, has shown the U.S. threw its weight behind oil giant Unocal’s efforts to build an ambitious pipeline linking Central Asia’s vast energy fields with the Indian Ocean. Mullah Muhammad Ghaus, the Islamic Emirate’s foreign minister, led an expenses-paid delegation to Unocal’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas, at the end of 1997.
**
The clerics, housed at a five-star hotel, were taken to see the NASA museum, several supermarkets and, somewhat peculiarly, the local zoo.
**
In April 1996, Robin Raphel — then Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, and now President Barack Obama’s ambassador for non-military aid to Pakistan, visited Kabul to lobby for the project. Later that year, she was again in Kabul, this time calling on the international community to “engage the Taliban.”**Ishtiaq Ahmad, Pakistani commentator and scholar, has pointed out that oil wasn’t the only driver of these sentiments. It suited the U.S., he argued in a perceptive 2002 essay, to back the “emergence of an inherently anti-Iran Sunni force in Afghanistan”.
**
The U.S. was well aware that the Taliban’s dramatic rise had something to do with forces other than its purported popularity among Afghans: “my boys and I are riding into Mazhar-i-Sharif,” Rafiq Tarar, the head of the Pakistani intelligence’s Afghan operations, was recorded saying in an intercepted 1998 conversation.
**
Exceptionally savage **It was also evident that the regime the U.S. was endorsing was exceptionally savage. In a 1998 report, Physicians for Human Rights documented the Islamic Emirate’s war against Afghanistan’s women: the closing down of schools, the denial of medical care facilities, public floggings and institutionalised child-rape. It noted that men faced “extortion, arrest, gang rape, and abuse in detention because of their ethnicity or presumed political views.”
**
From at least January 1998, evidence also emerged of systematic war crimes. Larry Goodson, in his 2002 scholarly work, *Afghanistan’s Endless War, documented the use of scorched-earth tactics, the denial of United Nations food-aid to ethnic minorities, and the demolition of their homes. Ms Raphael had these words for the critics: “The Taliban do not seek to export Islam, only to liberate Afghanistan”.

In 1996, a State department report described Osama bin Laden as one of the “most significant sponsors of terrorism today.” Even though the Islamic Emirate sheltered bin Laden, it was never declared a state sponsor of terrorism.****“Madeline Albright, [her] undersecretary Tom Pickering and regional specialists in state’s South Asia bureau,” records Steve Coll in his magisterial work *Ghost Wars, “all recommended that the administration continue its policy of diplomatic engagement with the Taliban.

They would use pressure and promises of future aid to persuade [Taliban chief Mullah Muhammad] Omar to break with bin Laden.”Islamic Emirate officials thus met with State Department representatives as late as March and July 2001. From the memoirs of Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Islamic Emirate’s envoy to Islamabad, we know that they also passed on information that bin Laden was planning an attack on the U.S. — to no effect.“The truth”, Ms Albright would later argue, “was that those [attacks before 9/11] were happening overseas and while there were Americans who died, there were not thousands and it did not happen on U.S. soil”.

It isn’t: Libya, Iraq, South Yemen, and Syria, all secular states, hadn’t killed “thousands” or “on U.S. soil” in 1979, when the State Department first began designating sponsors of terrorism. There was something about the Islamic Emirate that was different.

Deeper than oil rigs******For a sensible understanding of the intellectual underpinnings of western romancing of the Taliban, therefore, one must excavate deeper than oil rigs: the West’s relationship with Islamism has to do with ideas about the world, not just cash. In search of reliable collaborators across the Middle East, colonial states threw their weight behind reactionary tendencies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Islam was used to legitimise this project.

Led by the enigmatic scholar, Gerhard von Mende, Nazi Germany’s Ostminsterium recruited Muslims from Central Asia to aid its fight against the Soviet Union. Ian Johnson’s remarkable history, *A Mosque in Munich, shows the Central Intelligence Agency recruited many of these ex-Nazis.********The West’s Afghanistan policy marks a return to these geostrategic roots —this time founded on the hope that religious-authoritarian regimes will provide a volatile region stability.

Its growing engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, its tactical embrace of jihadists in Libya and Syria, its use of the right-wing cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as a mediator with the Taliban form other parts of this mosaic.********Afghanistan’s political parties and political representatives aren’t the ones, notably, who will be doing the deal. The Taliban isn’t being asked to agree to terms acceptable to other Afghans. Afghanistan’s women’s organisations or ethnic minorities aren’t at the table in Doha.

Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to reassure secular Afghans, promising that her country “intends to stay the course with our friends.” “We will not leave you on your own”, said Germany’s Foreign Minister, Guido Westwelle, echoing her words.****Mohan Lal Kashmiri might have had some thoughts on these promises. Those they are directed at in Afghanistan almost certainly do.

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Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

[http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/19/us-sees-new-interest-from-taliban-in-peace-talks/

US sees new interest from Taliban in peace talksPublished January 19, 2012](http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/19/us-sees-new-interest-from-taliban-in-peace-talks/)| Associated Press

WASHINGTON – T**he Obama administration is moving ahead with plans for negotiating with the Taliban, confident that talks offer the best chance to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan. But the military worries things are moving too fast, and intelligence agencies offered a gloomy prognosis in their latest Afghanistan report.

**
Several current and former U.S. officials said the most substantive give-and-take to date between U.S. and Taliban negotiators could happen in the next week, with the goal of establishing what the U.S. calls confidence-building measures – specific steps that the U.S. and the insurgents agree to take ahead of formal talks. Those talks, if they ever take place, would include the United States, the Taliban and the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, a senior US official said.

Like others interviewed, the official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive diplomacy. Elements of the U.S. outreach to the Taliban are also classified.

The diplomatic, military and intelligence branches of the U.S. government differ over the value of talks with the Taliban or whether now is the right time to so publicly shift focus away from the ongoing military campaign that primarily targets Taliban insurgents. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and some uniformed military leaders have recently sounded some of the strongest notes of caution, especially on when to grant Taliban requests for the transfer of several of its prisoners from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military and other U.S. officials said.

**The latest Afghan National Intelligence Estimate warns that the Taliban will grow stronger, using the talks to gain credibility and run out the clock until U.S. troops depart Afghanistan, while continuing to fight for more territory, say U.S. officials who have read the classified document. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the roughly 100-page review, an amalgam of intelligence community’s predictions of possible scenarios for the Afghan war through the planned end to U.S. combat in 2014.

**
It says the Afghan government has largely failed to prove itself to its people and will likely continue to weaken and find influence only in the cities. It predicts that the Taliban and warlords will largely control the countryside.

Meanwhile, Karzai is still uneasy with the pace and direction of talks. He resents the selection of Qatar as the site of a Taliban political office, although he has reluctantly agreed to that U.S.-backed plan. And he worries that the United States will strike a deal with the Taliban and force that deal on his government, two Afghan officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. Karzai wanted the office located in Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Afghanistan.

U.S. officials close to the negotiations say that despite these warnings the Taliban high command is more ready for talks than in the past, at least with the United States if not the elected Afghan government it opposes.

One sign was the surprising public endorsement by the Taliban of the plan to open a negotiating office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. But U.S. officials also cite more subtle indications of a shift toward peace negotiations, including the recent participation in preliminary talks of more senior and influential Taliban representatives.

The senior U.S. official said negotiators are now confident they are talking to credible intermediaries for the main Taliban command based in Pakistan.

The administration’s top negotiator, Marc Grossman, was building support for talks among regional allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia this week, to be followed by discussions with Taliban representatives, U.S. and other government officials said. Ahead of those sessions, officials described them as the most substantive and highest-level to date, with plans to cover specifics of the new office and the sequence of further good faith efforts on both sides that would set the stage for real talks.

One topic was expected to be a U.S. offer to release two or three Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo to custody in Qatar, although two officials said that effort is moving more slowly than plans for the office.

A waiting period would follow that transfer before any other Taliban transfers would be considered. U.S. officials said Congress would be consulted throughout.

The Taliban had sought both the office and the prisoner release as preconditions for real talks.

The senior U.S. official said the U.S. has set clear conditions for opening the office, including that the Taliban must agree not to use it for fundraising or propaganda, or to run insurgent operations. Larger conditions include assurances that the insurgents are truly interested in a political settlement and not using negotiations as a way to run out the clock until U.S. forces leave.

The central political office confers instant, though controversial, legitimacy on the diffuse insurgency as a political movement and provides a site for formal talks. The idea is to give the Taliban room to negotiate in a location with less direct pressure from Pakistan, which has ties to some militant groups and houses parts of the Taliban leadership.

The U.S. intelligence assessment looks past the near horizon for talks.

It predicts the likely outcome of two strategies: moderate engagement, in which the U.S. continues special operations raids against key Taliban leaders, and village outreach to strengthen local government, while conventional forces train Afghanistan’s army and police force, and limited engagement, in which the U.S. would continue economic and political support, and some Afghan security training, but most troops would withdraw.

Both strategies can weaken the Taliban, the analysts say, but ultimately, neither course of action is likely to stop the continued weakening of the Afghan state, the officials said. The NIE did suggest eliminating top Taliban leaders in the next two years and continuing to build Afghan government could help offset that.

In that way, the NIE’s bleak predictions also give the White House reason to hasten the reconciliation process, in order to pull U.S. troops out what some analysts termed a hopeless stalemate.

Arsala Rahmani a former Taliban official turned Afghan peace negotiator, said that in the past year the Taliban leadership had expressed to the United States a new willingness to negotiate.

“Something happened,” said Rahmani, a member of the Afghanistan peace council. “The leadership of the Taliban saw a green light from the Obama administration and after that, the Taliban leadership appointed people to get involved in the negotiation process.”

Although U.S. and Taliban representatives have met secretly several times over the past year in Europe and the Persian Gulf, the Taliban endorsement of the office plan on Jan. 3 was the first time it has publicly expressed willingness for substantive negotiations.

U.S. and other officials also said they are encouraged by the insurgents’ apparent plans to staff the new headquarters office with senior figures with ties to top Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The U.S. considers full peace negotiations on the model of Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia to be a long shot now, several officials said. But the administration is trying to build a framework for political discussions between the Taliban and the Karzai government that could span the next two years when U.S. combat forces will withdraw.

The Taliban sought direct talks with the U.S., whom it considers the true power broker in Afghanistan, as an alternative to talks with the Karzai government. The United States had shunned such contacts for years, saying talks must be led by Afghans and that military gains must be consolidated before talks would be productive.

The Obama administration shifted course last year and opened the direct channel in secret. The US acknowledged the previously clandestine contacts only after they were revealed publicly, apparently by allies of Karzai who felt undermined by the separate channel.

There were multiple avenues of communication between the U.S. and the Taliban over the last year, some public and others through back channels. The senior U.S. official said none was judged to be an authentic direct message from Omar.

**The United States considers Omar a terrorist who could be killed by U.S. forces in the same manner as Usama bin Laden. But the U.S. also recognizes that Omar is the linchpin to a deal that could finally end the war that began with the 2001 U.S. invasion and ouster of the ruling Taliban government. The Taliban has sought a return to political and territorial influence ever since, primarily through guerrilla tactics. U.S. and Afghan officials think Omar is interested.
**

A personal emissary of Omar, Tayyab Agha, conducted the initial, tentative contacts with the U.S. last year and remains a lead negotiator.

Rahmani said other Taliban negotiators include Shahabuddin Dilawar, former Taliban ambassador to Saudi Arabia; and Mohammed Sher Abbas Stanikzai., former deputy health minister during the Taliban regime. Without approval from Omar, these people would not have been appointed, he said.

](“http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/19/us-sees-new-interest-from-taliban-in-peace-talks/#ixzz1jztvP5KH”)

100

Re: Taliban no more terrorists?

on the other hand:

Marine helicopter crashes in Afghanistan killing six
France suspending training operations for Afghan troops after 4 French soldiers killed