[Tolo News] In response to a recent report by The New York Times...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
exposing secret meetings between President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
's circle and the Taliban, the High Peace Council (HPC), officially charged with managing the grinding of the peace processor, has said it had no knowledge of the talks.
According to the The New York Times, Aimal Faizi, Karzai's front man, confirmed that the President has met secretly with the Taliban in recent months to discuss a possible reconciliation agreement. He claimed the talks were positive and the most serious step in contacts with the Taliban since the war began in 2001.
But the news is likely to only further aggravate tensions between Kabul and Washington, which have reached an all-time at the start of the new year.
Stalled negotiations over a Kabul-Washington security pact and butting heads over prisoner releases and civilian casualties have been the flash points of conflict between the two governments, but as Karzai's secret meetings suggest, much more has been going on beneath the surface.
Faizi said the Taliban have been pleased with the stance President Karzai has taken on the Kabul-Washington Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), which could indicate that Karzai, as the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
combat mission draws to an end this year, is perhaps more concerned about closing the gap with the Taliban than keeping the one between him and Washington from opening up more.
Some have suggested Karzai is looking to intentionally derail the BSA along with future relations with the U.S. and its allies in order to build goodwill with the Taliban. If true, it would be a ploy that could either lead to national reconciliation or simply play into a Taliban plot to weaken the central government.
But Karzai's motives and tactics remain somewhat of a mystery, even to people supposedly inside the inner circle of peace negotiations. The HPC, the only body intended to conduct talks with the Taliban, has said it was completely unaware of the secret talks between Karzai and krazed killer leaders.
"The High Peace Council had honestly no idea about the secret talks between President Karzai and the Taliban in another country," HPC front man Muhammad Ismael Qasimyar said.
According to The New York Times, the Taliban reached out to Karzai just before the Loya Jirga convened in November and approved the BSA for signing. Since then, correspondence has been intermittent, with representatives of either side reported to have met in Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
and the United Arab Emirates.
"Talks and the leadership of the peace and reconciliation process is the responsibility of the High Peace Council," Qasimyar asserted.
The New York Times' sources inside the Afghan government have indicated contact with the Taliban has slowed recently, which, while adding to fears that Karzai may have been duped, fails to make clear where the HPC fits in, and what say it will have in the grinding of the peace processor moving forward.