U.S. Silent About Taliban Guarantee Offer on al Qaeda

[Nur]

U.S. Silent About Taliban Guarantee Offer on al Qaeda

 

By Gareth Porter

 

WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (IPS) - The Barack Obama administration is refusing to acknowledge an offer by the leadership of the Taliban in early December to give "legal guarantees" that it will not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other countries.

 

The administration's silence on the offer, despite a public statement by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton expressing scepticism about any Taliban offer to separate itself from al Qaeda, effectively leaves the door open to negotiating a deal with the Taliban based on such a proposal. The Taliban, however, has chosen to interpret the Obama administration's position as one of rejection of its offer.

 

The Taliban offer, included in a statement dated Dec. 4 and e-mailed to news organisations the following day, said the organisation has "no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantees if foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan".

 

The statement did not mention al Qaeda by name or elaborate on what was meant by "legal guarantees" against such "meddling", but it was an obvious response to past U.S. insistence that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is necessary to prevent al Qaeda from having a safe haven in Afghanistan once again.

 

It suggested that the Taliban is interested in negotiating an agreement with the United States involving a public Taliban renunciation of ties with al Qaeda, along with some undefined arrangements to enforce a ban al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan in return for a commitment to a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.

 

Despite repeated queries by IPS to the State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley and to the National Security Council's press office over the past week about whether either Secretary Clinton or President Obama had been informed about the Taliban offer, neither office has responded to the question.

 

Anand Gopal of The Wall Street Journal, whose Dec. 5 story on the Taliban message was the only one to report that initiative, asked a U.S. official earlier that day about the offer to provide "legal guarantees".

 

The official, who had not been aware of the Taliban offer, responded with what was evidently previously prepared policy guidance casting doubt on the willingness of the Taliban to give up its ties with al Qaeda. "This is the same group that refused to give up bin Laden, even though they could have saved their country from war," said the official. "They wouldn't break with terrorists then, so why would we take them seriously now?"

 

The following day, asked by ABC News "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos about possible negotiations with "high level" Taliban leaders, Clinton said, "We don't know yet."

 

But then she made the same argument the unnamed U.S. official had made to Gopal on Saturday. "[W]e asked Mullah Omar to give up bin Laden before he went into Afghanistan after 9/11," Clinton said, "and he wouldn't do it. I don't know why we think he would have changed by now."

 

In the same ABC interview, Defence Secretary Robert Gates suggested that the Taliban would not be willing to negotiate on U.S. terms until after their "momentum" had been stopped.

 

"I think that the likelihood of the leadership of the Taliban, or senior leaders, being willing to accept the conditions Secretary Clinton just talked about," Gates said, "depends in the first instance on reversing their momentum right now, and putting them in a position where they suddenly begin to realise that they're likely to lose."

 

In a statement issued two days after the Clinton-Gates appearance on ABC, the Taliban leadership, which now calls itself "Mujahideen", posted another statement saying that what it called its "proposal" had been rejected by the United States.

 

The statement said, in part, "Washington turns down the constructive proposal of the leadership of Mujahideen," and repeated its pledge to "ensure that the next government of the Muhajideen will not meddle in the internal affairs of other countries including the neighbours if the foreign troops pull out of Afghanistan."

 

The fact that both the State Department and the NSC are now maintaining silence on the offer rather than repeating the Clinton-Gates expression of scepticism strongly suggests that the White House does not want to close the door publicly to negotiations with the Taliban linking troop withdrawal to renunciation of ties with al Qaeda, among other issues.

 

Last month, an even more explicit link between U.S. troop withdrawal and a severing by the Taliban of its ties with al Qaeda was made by a U.S. diplomat in Kabul.

 

In an article published Nov. 11, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin, who was then visiting Kabul, quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying, "If the Taliban made clear to us that they have broken with al Qaeda and that their own objectives were nonviolent and political - however abhorrent to us - we wouldn't be keeping 68,000-plus troops here."

 

That statement reflected an obvious willingness to entertain a negotiated settlement under which U.S. troops would be withdrawn and the Taliban would break with al Qaeda.

 

A significant faction within the Obama administration has sought to portray those who suggest that the Taliban might part ways with al Qaeda as deliberately deceiving the West.

 

Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, who headed the administration's policy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan last spring, recently said, "A lot of smoke is being thrown up to confuse people."

 

But even the hard-liner Riedel concedes that the Pakistani Taliban's attacks on the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) threaten the close relationship between the Afghan Taliban and ISI. The Pakistani Taliban continue to be closely allied with al Qaeda.

 

The Taliban began indicating it openness to negotiations with the United States and NATO in September 2007. But it began to hint publicly at its willingness to separate itself from al Qaeda in return for a troop withdrawal only three months ago.

 

Taliban leader Mullah Omar's message for Eid al-Fitr in mid-September assured "all countries" that a Taliban state "will not extend its hand to jeopardise others, as it itself does not allow others to jeopardise us... Our goal is to gain independence of the country and establish a just Islamic system there."

 

But the insurgent leadership has also emphasised that negotiations will depend on the U.S. willingness to withdraw troops. In anticipation of Obama's announcement of a new U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar issued a 3,000-word statement Nov. 25 which said, "The people of Afghanistan will not agree to negotiations which prolongs and legitimises the invader's military presence in our beloved country."

 

"The invading Americans want Mujahidin to surrender under the pretext of negotiation," it said.

 

That implied that the Taliban would negotiate if the U.S. did not insist on the acceptance of a U.S. military presence in the country.

 

The day after the Taliban proposal to Washington, Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a public plea to the United States to engage in direct negotiations with the Taliban leadership.

 

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Karzai said there is an "urgent need" for negotiations with the Taliban, and made it clear that the Obama administration had opposed such talks.

 

Karzai did not say explicitly that he wanted the United States to be at the table for such talks, but said, "Alone, we can't do it."

 

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

[Nur]

The Baggage Of American Extremism

 

No Enemy, No Negotiations: Only The Dead Are Real

 

By Gordon Duff

Senior Editor

 

December 16, 2009 "Veterans Today" -- When General Petraeus asked for the "surge" in Iraq, he also opened negotiations with top Sunni and Shiite militia leaders, opened not only "negotiations" but started passing out cash. This combined with the "hammer" of a powerful new military force was the temporary military solution he had been tasked with, one that was, within limits, successful. The lack of real diplomatic negotiations after that has bogged the US down in Iraq where it now looks like we may spend years.

 

Now our new "surge" in Afghanistan won't even have a Taliban "buyoff." We had become addicted to the "black and white" version of Bushitism to the extent that we, as a nation, have given up thought entirely. We know we can't win. Do we expect an army of angels to come down from heaven, the ones Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld dreamed of, or are we going to start acting like a world leader again and identify the players, bring them to the table and do our best to really win where it counts?

 

There are a couple of ways to go when discussing diplomacy. You can talk about the process and how it should end a conflict or look at the underlying reasons for never even considering it. Do we accept that abandoning diplomacy as a sign of "weakness" so we could move forward with the ill fated invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan was part of a realignment of our culture? How do we recover from basing our actions on facts to basing them on belief and mythology?

 

Eight years of bizarre "Christian Zionism," a military run by religious fanatics and a government of drugstore cowboys and phony evangelists was unprepared to guide a superpower toward policies of responsible world leadership.

 

Now, President Obama is afraid to stop "driving over a cliff" simply because nobody wants to tell the American people the truth, how ****** and useless we have actually become, and how idiotic our policies have been. It is assumed that so many Americans are mentally defective, addicted to imaginary vaccine plots and secret UN invasions, that acting like a responsible and intelligent world leader would not seem "credible."

 

NEGOTIATIONS: WHO AND HOW

 

We have a couple of problems to begin with. Few understand what Afghanistan is. It certainly isn't a country, not by any stretch of the imagination. It is a product of haggling between Britain and Russia over a hundred years ago, and a bit more misguided fooling around in 1947.

 

Afghanistan is aligned with India and hates Pakistan.

 

Most Afghani's are Pashtun tribesmen, some are settled and many are nomadic, some of whom are extremely warlike, requiring no given enemy, they will attack each other out of boredom.

 

Currently, the "Taliban," not the same Taliban as before, but a new "friendlier" Taliban, or so they tell us, controls 80% of Afghanistan entirely and most of the other 20% too. We keep trying to name leaders, heartless "evil doers" to get troops and money flowing but, in truth, nobody is in charge.

 

This is the problem. With nobody in charge, President Karzai in Kabul runs nothing, the Taliban is a loose bunch of "unnamed others" who would be fighting each other if we weren't there, there is nobody we can easily negotiate with even if we weren't as crazy as they are, a fact in evidence to everyone but us.

 

SURROGATE WAR BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

 

Much of the war in Afghanistan invovles India and Pakistan in ways American doesn't see. India is supplying the Taliban because they are fighting against Pakistan. India likes the United States but their weapons are used against the US. India doesn't care.

 

Pakistan wants Afghanistan to have a small army because war between Afghanistan and Pakistan is very likely. It that happens, India is likely to invade Pakistan and the war will go nuclear. This is almost unavoidable and we are paying no attention to this.

 

BIN LADEN AND THE TERRORISTS

 

All "reality based" people know Osama bin Laden has been dead for years. The only people mentioning him are con men looking for someone to blame or trying to scare ******. Not only is bin Laden dead but Al Qaeda, if it existed at all, and proof of this is scarce, either moved to Africa or everyone in Al Qaeda quit and went home.

 

We can all agree they went to Africa and we can run around there looking for them. All we find now is an occasional "leader" who we blow to kingdom come with our Predator drones. What we do agree on is that there are fewer members of Al Qaeda than would fill a bus. These are America's official estimates, the ones used by Gates and McChrystal.

 

There is no evidence that there are any terrorist training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan where attacks on the US are being planned. This is a fantasy.

 

Can you expect an intelligence estimate whose cover sheet is adorned with mysterious quotes from the Old Testament to be any more credible inside than outside? This was the norm in the Rumsfeld Pentagon. If the truth didn't match biblical prophesy as interpreted by TV evangelists, the military changed the truth.

 

Reality based people call "changed truth" a form of lying.

 

WHO ARE THE PLAYERS?

 

Nobody wants to admit who the interested parties are in the conflict between Iran, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, the real problem. The US is involved for sure. Britain caused the problem, so they should be included. Brits like Richard North and Mike Smith are among the few who understand any of this.

 

China has considerable interest in the region as does Russia. Without recognizing their economic spheres of influence, no lasting solution can be realized.

 

Israel is the primary arms supplier to India and maybe others too. They also have economic interests but generally act thru their surrogate, the United States.

 

WHERE DO WE START?

 

A first step would be to push the Taliban to set up a Shura or leadership council and arrange for a cease fire. The threat of 30,000 new troops and expanded Predator attacks should make these discussions desirable.

 

Accepting the fact that Afghanistan will solve their own problems and that no foreign power will do anything positive there militarily is paramount.

 

Outlining regional problems, nuclear threats, decades old conflicts and regional economic needs should be on the table.

 

War without purpose is what we have now. Our cover story, forcing a military solution on a nation that rejects, not only Karzai and his Kabul regime but all American involvement may sell in Washington and Tel Aviv but not in the real world.

 

Educating Americans about the realities of our own mistakes and the depth of the idiocy of others we have walked into blind and, oh yes, deaf too, is a start.

 

Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.

[Fabregas_Bruv]

They are just trying to find a way to divide the Afghans before the exit. However, there are currently no shariffites or Kadyrovites available in afghanistan.

[Abtigiis]

Taliban must never be allowed to rule Afghanistan, with or without a deal with them on AlQaeada is reached. They are primitive clerics who most Afghani's abhor. They must be totally defeated.

[Nur]

Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know

 

Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.

 

By Jeremy Scahill

 

December 18, 2009 "RebelReports" -- A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.

 

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

 

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

 

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.

 

Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”

 

A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”

 

The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:

 

In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects. According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects. USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.

 

The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.

 

As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.

 

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the international best-seller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he won twice. While a correspondent for Democracy Now!, Scahill reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations.