"Serious negotiations with the Taliban had been gaining momentum until Pakistan arrested a string of Taliban leaders.... Pakistan only arrested the Taliban officials who were open to peace talks.... deliberately foiling peace efforts."
I don't know if people know this but AmeriKa has no interest in peace in the region, and they certainly don't like their Afghan puppet acting independently.
"Ex-envoy cites little progress in Taliban talks; Galbraith's account differs from his boss’s" by Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | March 20, 2010
WASHINGTON — UN officials in Kabul held “haphazard’’ and “irregular’’ meetings with people who claimed to represent the Taliban but did not make any serious progress, Peter Galbraith, a former deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan, told the Globe yesterday.
Related: Occupation Iraq: The Founding Father of Modern Iraq
Galbraith’s account differs from that of his former boss. Kai Eide, the UN’s former special representative to Afghanistan, told the BBC that serious negotiations with the Taliban had been gaining momentum until Pakistan arrested a string of Taliban leaders last month.
Related: U.N. Says Taliban Not Terrorists
Pakistan’s recent arrest of senior Taliban figures heartened many in Washington, who have long pressed Pakistan to do more to rein in the militants inside their borders.
Yes, and now the war can continue.
But some analysts, including prominent Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid, have speculated that Pakistan only arrested the Taliban officials who were open to peace talks with Afghanistan. Such an action would send a message that Pakistan must not be excluded from negotiations.
The Associated Press reported earlier this week that Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, had been reaching out with some success to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar — a top military strategist and reputed number two in the Afghan Taliban leadership — before he was arrested and that the move angered Karzai.
Well, Karzai has been stepping out of line a lot lately.
Also see: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Top Taliban Captured
Eide’s BBC interview yesterday supported the view that Pakistan was deliberately foiling peace efforts, which Eide called “long overdue.’’ He said he had been meeting with people who had the authority to speak for Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, who is believed to be hiding in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
Yeah, but he wants to take the Taliban off the terrorist list.
That is never going to fly with AmeriKa.
Related: Pashtun History Lesson
The Mystery Man of the Taliban
You can't make peace now, AmeriKa! They taunted your Zionist tool!
“We met people who are senior in the Taliban leadership and who also had the authority of the Quetta Shura to engage in such discussions,’’ Eide said. He said the talks were initiated a year ago, subsided over the summer, but were renewed in the fall, after the Afghan elections.
He said the meetings, which were later held in Dubai, picked up steam until Baradar was arrested in February with US help in an operation that US officials have described as a lucky accident. In the days that followed, Pakistan captured more than a dozen other Taliban leaders, prompting praise from Washington. But Eide said the arrests halted UN peace efforts.
For which they were meant.
“I don’t believe that these people were arrested by coincidence,’’ he said....
Me neither.
Galbraith strongly disputed Eide’s assertions, saying that the people Eide was speaking to claimed to be intermediaries but that it was never clear whether they were authorized to speak for the Taliban.
“He has frankly greatly exaggerated the importance of these meetings, which were haphazard, periodic, and nothing special,’’ said Galbraith in a telephone interview from his home in Townshend, Vt. “To claim that this was something promising that therefore should have impeded antiterrorist activities against people we have been trying to get for many years, that is just false.’’
Think I am going to believe this self-serving AmeriKan liar?
Of course, do believe the peace effort was never serious.
That fact of AmeriKan policy never changes.
He described the recent arrests by Pakistan as the “fruit of the new relationship’’ the Obama administration is forging with Pakistan.
“We have gone from a situation, during the Bush years, when the Pakistanis would lie to us and we would accept their lies to a partnership,’’ he said.
Oh my God, what a PoS!
Yeah, it is the Pakistanis who are LYING to people!
So when are you going to CHANGE SIDES AGAIN, you globalist piece of garbage?
Galbraith has had a strained relationship with his former boss, Eide. Last fall, the United Nations recalled him after he wrote a scathing letter accusing Eide of concealing election fraud that benefited Karzai.
Related: UN Approves Stolen Afghan Election
Yesterday Richard Holbrooke, special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, declined to comment on whether Baradar’s arrest undermined peace efforts, but said: “We are extremely gratified that the Pakistani government has apprehended the number two person in the Taliban, and he is where he belongs.’
He is living there now, isn't he?
--more--"
Yeah, how go those peace talks anyway?
"As deadly bombings strike Afghanistan, hard-line official backs peace effort" by Associated Press | March 22, 2010
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — At least 12 civilians died in separate bombings yesterday in front-line provinces of Afghanistan, officials said.
A suicide bomber killed 10 civilians and wounded seven others when he detonated his explosives near an Afghan army patrol at a bridge in Gereshk, a town in the southern province of Helmand. Provincial spokesman Dawood Ahmadi said all the victims were civilians, most of them vendors selling goods along the highway.
Another reeking false flag.
Helmand is the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting in recent months.
In eastern Afghanistan, two civilians died when a roadside bomb exploded near a crowd celebrating the Afghan new year in Khost province. And in Wardak province, an elderly man was shot and killed by a joint Afghan-international force that mistakenly believed he was a threat, NATO said.
What can one say to that?
Afghanistan’s hard-line vice president yesterday expressed hope that an upcoming national conference will lay the foundation for peace with insurgents.
I wouldn't count on it, not with the U.S. around.
During celebrations in Mazar-i-Sharif marking the new year, Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who commanded forces that overthrew the Taliban in 2001, said a “peace jirga’’ planned for late April or early May would try to chart a way to reconcile with government opponents.
I like the sound of that.
“The government will try to find a peaceful life for those Afghans who are unhappy,’’ Fahim said without mentioning the Taliban by name. “God willing, by the help of the people, we will have a successful, historic jirga. . . . My dear countrymen, my hope is that this year will be the year of peaceful stability.’’
That is NOT WHAT U.S. GENERALS are saying!
"General David Petraeus, predicted that 2010 will be a difficult year and that the fighting in Afghanistan will probably get harder before it gets easier"
Good luck, guy.
Fahim’s support would be crucial to efforts by President Hamid Karzai to reach a political settlement with Taliban leaders to end the war, now in its ninth year.
Fahim, who has been critical in the past of any deals with the Taliban, is an ethnic Tajik and former defense minister, while Karzai and the Taliban leadership are ethnic Pashtuns.
The jirga, an Afghan institution in which community leaders meet to take decisions by consensus, is expected to formulate a national strategy for reconciliation talks with the Taliban and their allies.
A spokesman for a Taliban-allied group led by former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said his party had sent a three-member delegation to Kabul to talk peace with the government.
Related: CIA's Ace-in-the-Hole in Afghanistan
Things starting to make sense to you now, readers, as to why the war drags on and on?
But the spokesman, Wali Ullah, did not say when the delegation from Hizb-i-Islam, or Party of Islam, had arrived in the Afghan capital.
Spokesmen for the government could not be reached due to the holiday.Maybe I should take one.
A youth watched the celebration of Nowruz, the Afghan new year, from a roof on the hilltop at the Kart-e-Sakhi shrine in Kabul. (Associated Press)
Wow! Looks like fun!
--more--"
So, did the CIA asset ever arrive?
"Karzai talks peace with militant group linked to Taliban; Hekmatyar seeks concessions from Afghan leader" by Deb Riechmann, Associated Press | March 23, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai held an unprecedented meeting yesterday with representatives of a major Taliban-linked militant group, boosting his outreach to insurgency leaders to end the eight-year war.
Less certain is whether the talks with the weakened Hizb-i-Islami faction represent a game-changer in the conflict....
It is the first time that high-ranking representatives of the group, led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, have traveled to Kabul to discuss peace. The reconciliation offer from Hekmatyar contrasts with his reputation as a ruthless extremist.
Hekmatyar’s power has waned over the years and he commands far fewer fighters than the Taliban.
Nevertheless, Hizb-i-Islami is very active in at least four provinces of eastern Afghanistan and parts of the north. His defection from the insurgency would be a coup for Karzai and could encourage some Taliban commanders to explore peace deals.
Then it's not happening.
Talking with the Taliban and other insurgent groups is gaining traction in Afghanistan, even as thousands of US and NATO reinforcements are streaming in to reverse the insurgents’ momentum.
Yup, PEACE is GAINING as WAR ESCALATES!
Oh, yeah, it's an AmeriKan newspaper, all right!
The talks have not stemmed the fighting. NATO reported three service members were killed yesterday in separate explosions in southern Afghanistan.
Hekmatyar, who is in his 60s, was a major recipient of US military aid during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s but fell out of favor with Washington because of his role in the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal.
Yeah, the money never stopped and that's the CIA cover story lie the newspaper regurgitates for them.
Yeah, turns out "Al-CIA-Duh" is a U.S. CREATION!!!!
The US government declared Hekmatyar a “global terrorist’’ in February 2003, saying he participated in and supported terror acts committed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
CIA stabbed him in the back, huh?
So why did it take so long if they knew about him way back when?
Unless that tag is removed, the designation could complicate any move by the United States to sign off on a deal, even though in recent years Hekmatyar has expressed a willingness to negotiate with the Karzai government.
JUST the OUT the U.S. is LOOKING FOR, 'eh?
A spokesman for Hekmatyar said the delegation had lunch with Karzai at the presidential palace and planned to meet with him again....
Karzai better watch his back. CIA has no problem rubbing people out when they stray from the program.
Minister of Economy Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal, leader of a political party that split off from Hekmatyar, said contacts that had been underway for months were apparently moving forward, or the delegation would not have made the trip to Kabul.
“I welcome this effort. I hope that this kind of negotiations continues and that we will witness a delegation from the Taliban coming to start negotiations,’’ Arghandiwal said.
The Hizb-i-Islami delegation is led by Qutbudin Halal, who served in the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani in the 1990s, and includes a son-in-law of Hekmatyar. Three members of the group arrived in Kabul from Europe on March 6, according to a member of the group who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations. Two others arrived in the past few days....
Another controlled-opposition group from outside the country!
The top demand, repeated throughout the plan, is for foreign forces to begin withdrawing in July — a year ahead of President Obama’s desired deadline to begin a pullout....
Oh, so this is all about nothing, this peace talk -- just as it always is.
