President Musharraf's proposal to the Kabul jirga to separate diehard Taliban from others may not be acceptable to the United States, according to an editorial in the Boston Globe.
| I could separate them but I'd need a bandsaw ... |
| My dad has a nice rusty one you could borrow... |
The newspaper writes, "A deal of this kind will require compromises that the jirga participants may be ready to make but that the Bush administration ? with its propensity to frame complex issues as stark conflicts of good and evil ? may not be prepared to accept. Musharraf highlighted a key compromise when he spoke of isolating the diehard militants among the Taliban and trying to o 'win the hearts and minds' of the Pashtun ethnic group from whom the Taliban draw their recruits. Indeed, the jirga's closing statement said that 50 tribal leaders from both sides of the border would meet regularly to 'expedite the ongoing process of dialogue for peace and reconciliation with the opposition'. This was a tactful way of describing a strategy to co-opt those Taliban elements who can be won over." |