[Quqnoos] The Taliban Supreme Leader, Mohammad Omar, is ready to break with his Al Qaeda allies, the suckers at The Guardian reports. The Taliban Chief will end his ties with Al Qaida to make peace in Afghanistan, the British newspaper quotes a former Pakistani intelligence officer who trained Mullah Omar.
Brigadier Sultan Amir Tarar, a retired officer with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, said: "The moment he gets control the first target will be the al-Qaida people. He wants peace in the country, he doesn't want adventure. He has enough of that."
| Or perhaps it's Brigadier Tarar (ret'd) who is tired of adventure and excitement. And one can see his point: he trained those men to be a weapon aimed at India and Afghanistan, and the weapon has turned in his hand to aim at his heart. I can't imagine anything more exhausting at a time when a man should be allowed to cultivate his roses in peace. |
Few know the Taliban as well as Tarar, who is sometimes called the "godfather of the Taliban" owing to his pivotal role in fostering the group's emergence during Afghanistan's 1990s civil war.
| That was long ago and far away. Times have changed, and even old retired brigadiers must, perforce, run to keep up. Especially when it is their own efforts that caused the times to change. |
Tarar, 65, downplayed the significance of reports that the head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, met senior Taliban commanders in Dubai earlier this month for "talks about talks".
"The people who went over there didn't have any value. There were no hardcore people from Mullah Omar's shura," Tarar told the Guardian, citing refugees and "people coming from Afghanistan" as his sources.
Tarar said Taliban talks could succeed only through direct engagement with Omar, the one-eyed leader whom he trained in guerrilla warfare during the 1980s.
The Taliban have not shown any interest in talks to Afghan government, pre-conditioning the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan to any peace deal. |