'President Obama may have a more intellectual way of conflating the threat, “Al Qaeda and their extremist allies” who may provide “safe haven” if they retake Afghanistan, but the essential counterproductive flaw in the thinking remains. U.S. policy talks a big game about reconciling with the “small t taliban,” but our conflation of the Taliban and Al Qaeda blocks any serious attempt at a political settlement. Worse, U.S. military strategies are taking a group that’s distinct from Al Qaeda and making it more vulnerable to Al Qaeda influence.'FULL ARTICLE AND REPORT LINK HERE.
Just read that report from Robert Greenwald. This blurring of the Taliban and al-Qaeda began before 9/11 and never looked back. Obama likes to consider himself difference from Bush, but there's little daylight between their conceptions of both groups. Petraeus, who staunchly opposes high-level negotiations with the Taliban, just gave a lengthy interview to the Financial Times where he focuses primarily on the Taliban.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2e77d09e-32f4-11e0-9a61-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1DJCnBTdT
So the argument goes that America must defeat the Taliban to block al-Qaeda's sanctuary. And it will keep going indefinitely.
James, You may be aware of a paper published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University which describes the decision by the Taliban leadership in 2002 to offer political reconciliation with the U.S.-backed Afghan administration.
ReplyDeleteIt quotes a former Taliban official who participated in the decision saing that the entire senior Taliban political leadership met in Pakistan in November 2002 to consider an offer of reconciliation with the new Afghan government in which they would join the political process.
They discussed whether to join the process or not and decided that they should join. They cite an intermediary who was then in contact with the Taliban leadership as recalling that they would have returned to Afghanistan to participate in the political system if they had been given an assurance they would not be arrested. But the Karzai government and the United States refused to offer such an assurance. They considered the Taliban a “spent force,”. Good call, guys. The authors of the University paper were Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, if you haven't already seen it.