The UN envoy in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, urged talks with all forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, to stanch the bloodshed in the country, in an interview published on Friday.
| Most of the blood is being shed by the Taliban, and they're mostly Paks. |
“If there is to be a chance for peace, we must talk to everyone, including alleged war criminals. The aim is to stabilise Afghanistan,” Koenigs told the German daily Berliner Zeitung.
| I'm sure the Berliner Zeitung can remember the discussions we had with the war criminals in 1945 that ended that war. |
He said this included the Taliban, which he described as “a movement that includes terrorists and uses terrorist methods but that also has a political foundation”.
| Terrorism isn't an end in itself. It's a tool to achieve an end, which is political. The target population is given the choice of giving in to the demands for power of the terror wielders or continuing to endure mindless and unpredictable violence with no end in sight. There will always be a certain number of invertebrates like Tom who're willing to give up without a fight, especially if it's somebody else's country and they don't have to live with the consequences. Normal people are for the most part less closely related to the Nudibranches but time and unrelenting pressure can be counted upon to move a certain proportion toward surrender. If the terrs can move enough of them quick enough they'll win; otherwise, it will be the terrs who're hunted down and killed like dogs when the patience of the targeted population is used up. Resistance is a military act, while surrender is a political act. |
Koenigs said the hardline movement also comprised “young fighters who often just need money” and “people who feel discriminated against by corrupt or partisan government officials” as well as drug dealers and fundamentalists.
| I'm still trying to figure where "young fighters who often just need money" gain any political legitimacy. The "corrupt and partisan government officials" were elected not that long ago, and if they're truly corrupt and overly partisan they can be voted out come next election. It's not the province of the UN envoy to dispose of elected governments - though they do seem a lot more willing to dispose of elected governments than they are to dispose of unelected and even genocidal governments like Sudan or Zim-bob-we. I'm not too sure why that is. |
“The idea that you have to kill all of them to win the conflict is nonsense,” he said.
| It's patently not nonsense. If we kill them all then we've won by definition. Being civilized - unlike our enemy, I might add - we're trying to keep the bloodshd to a minimum rather than committing genocide. |
“Of course there have to be talks with various groups. The answer to the conflict cannot only be based on the military or development policy but must be comprehensively political.”
| He must be good friends with Nancy Pelosi. That's the same sort of po-mo nonsense that led her to talk with Assad. When you sit down with thugs, what exactly do you talk about? |
He said the United Nations was trying to integrate all conflicting parties with a negotiated truce. “In the end, reconciliation has to come from the Afghans themselves,” he said.
| It's for damned sure that nothing substantive is going to come from UN envoys. |
| I disagree. UN envoys produce substantives at least once a day whilst perusing The Economist, sometimes twice if they've had the stewed prune compote at last night's banquet. |
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