|
US in Secret Talks with he Taliban
Surprisingly good piece in the New Yorker.The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks Or not so secret, I guess. with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several people briefed about the talks told me last week. The discussions are continuing; they are of an exploratory nature and do not yet amount to a peace negotiation. Mullah Omar is not a participant in the preliminary talks. He does not attend even secret meetings of underground Taliban leadership councils in Pakistani safe houses. When he does speak, he does so obliquely, via cassette tapes. Otherwise he would be pushing up poppies by now. One purpose of the talks initiated by the Obama Administration, therefore, is to assess which figures in the Taliban's leadership, if any, might be willing to engage in formal Afghan peace negotiations, and under what conditions. Is anybody in charge? There or here? The pursuit of peace, however, can be just as risky as the prosecution of war. If mismanaged, full-blown Afghan peace talks might ignite a civil war along ethnic lines. Also, the Taliban and their historical benefactors in Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, the spy agency directed by the Pakistani military, have an almost unblemished record of overreaching in Afghan affairs, and there is no reason to think that their habits would change if serious negotiations unfolded. And, even under the best of circumstances, an Afghan peace process would most likely mirror the present character of the war: a slow, complicated, and deathly grind, atomized and menaced by interference from neighboring governments--not just Pakistan's but also those of Iran, India, Russia, Uzbekistan, and China. rtwt Posted by: Glenmore 2011-02-19 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=316445 |