Joe Conason: Does the Taliban Want to Talk Peace with the U.S.?

[flpoljunkie]

Does the Taliban want to talk peace with the U.S.?

A team of ex-Taliban officials is quietly promoting negotiations -- and say their old comrades would dump al- Qaida
By Joe Conason

Feb. 05, 2010

Back in early December, I suggested that the Obama "surge" in Afghanistan might not be exactly what it seemed -- and, in fact, that the president may seek a negotiated settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, if he expects to meet his early deadline for withdrawal of American troops. Along the same line I noted that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s own report on the situation in Afghanistan had acknowledged, in passing, that the likeliest outcome of counterinsurgent warfare is negotiation and reconciliation rather than total victory.

No doubt such a settlement would mandate amnesty for Mullah Omar, the Taliban boss who escaped justice in 2001 along with Osama bin Laden, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush war cabinet. That is hardly a pleasing prospect. But the deeper question for American policymakers is whether the Taliban would agree to the U.S. bottom line: the expulsion of al-Qaida from Afghanistan and the renunciation of all ties with bin Laden.

Today, Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service reports on a team of four former high-ranking Taliban officials, who have served as intermediaries between the government and the rebels, and who believe such an agreement is not only possible but likely. The team includes the deposed regime’s former foreign minister and its former ambassador to Pakistan.

"The four Taliban mediators have been encouraging both Karzai and the Taliban leadership to begin with steps toward military de-escalation and confidence-building before proceeding to the central political-military issues that must be negotiated," writes Porter, who interviewed Arsullah Rahmani, a member of the mediation team who is also an elected member of the Afghan parliament, at his home in Kabul.

more...

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/02/05/afghantalks/index.html

[glowing]

1. WTF is going on over there? The Al Queda are CIA pawns.. so now the Taliban

want to work with the non-shadow side or just pretend to?

[Kahuna]

2. My guess is they just want to pretend to. nt

[glowing]

3. A warm feel-good story.