"Karzai seeks Afghan elders’ summit" Associated Press, January 15, 2013
KABUL — President Hamid Karzai said Monday that a meeting of the nation’s elders should convene to decide whether US troops staying in the country after 2014 would be immune from prosecution under Afghan law.
Karzai’s remarks were his first since returning from Washington, where he met last week with President Obama about the future of the alliance between the two countries.
This was also the first time Karzai has said that Afghans should hold a ‘‘loya jirga’’ — a national assembly of elders — to make the decision on US troop immunity.
The United States has said that it needs to maintain sole legal jurisdiction over its forces in Afghanistan as part of the agreement for forces that will stay after 2014. In Iraq, it was the Iraqi government’s refusal to grant such jurisdiction that caused US troops to completely quit that country.
See: Occupation Iraq: Decisive Iraqis
Also see: Sunday Globe Specials: US Lost Iraq War
Can you call it anything else?
‘‘We want our national sovereignty and the Americans want the safety of their soldiers,’’ Karzai said. ‘‘They don’t want their soldiers to be under the laws of another country.’’
I can assure that. Leave. All of 'em.
Karzai appeared to be trying to strike a conciliatory note, in sharp contrast to the harsh rhetoric and demands ahead of his US trip. However, he stressed that the issue of US troop immunity was not up to his administration to decide.
‘‘The Afghan government cannot make that decision. It is the decision of the people of Afghanistan. So a loya jirga of the people of Afghanistan should decide,’’ he said.
Loya jirgas have traditionally been used in the country to make major decisions.
--more--"
I'm sorry, but after fits and starts of peace talk over the years I no longer take it seriously.
"US envoy says Taliban talks stuck" by Patrick Quinn | Associated Press, January 18, 2013
KABUL — The United States wants serious peace negotiations with the Taliban to begin, but it has not been possible to get the process underway, the American ambassador to Afghanistan said.
James Cunningham said it was important for the Afghan government to get the talks started, yet he acknowledged that the peace process has not ‘‘even really begun.’’
The Afghan peace process has made little headway since it began several years ago. There are signs of increasing efforts to get talks back on track. US-backed talks broke down last March .
‘‘Our goal, or rather what we would like to see and I think the Afghans would like to see, is the beginning if not conclusion of a negotiation — at least the beginning of a serious process on peace and reconciliation — as soon as possible,’’ Cunningham said.
--more--"
You see why I feel the way I do? And who benefit$?
"Pakistan to set more Afghan militants free" by Rebecca Santana and Kathy Gannon | Associated Press, January 20, 2013
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan plans to release more Afghan militant detainees in an attempt to boost the peace process in neighboring Afghanistan before the departure of international troops next year, a top Pakistani official said.
Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani said Pakistan has initiated the process of releasing those Afghan detainees in its custody who they think will help facilitate the reconciliation process. His comments were made during a press conference Friday in Abu Dhabi and relayed by the Foreign Ministry on Saturday. He did not give a timetable.
In general, Kabul has pressed hard for Islamabad to release its detainees, with some officials saying that they hope the released Taliban can serve as intermediaries. But Washington is concerned about specific prisoners who they consider dangerous.
Jilani did not specifically mention whether Pakistan would release Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the former deputy leader of the Afghan Taliban whom Kabul has been pushing Pakistan to release.
Senior US and Afghan officials said the United States has informed the Pakistani authorities that it was reluctant to see Baradar go free and asked for prior notice so it can try to track his movements.
Pakistan has upward of 100 Afghan prisoners in its custody including Baradar, who was arrested by Pakistan in the southern city of Karachi in 2010.
The United States and Afghan officials said a similar US request for notification upon release has been made for another prisoner, Abdul Samad, according to the officials. Samad, who is from Kandahar, the former Taliban headquarters, is a bomb specialist.
Several senior Taliban have already been released by Pakistan. One was the Vice and Virtue Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who oversaw a legion of Taliban fighters who roamed the streets searching for people violating Taliban rules.
In November, Pakistan also released Anwar ul Haq Mujahed, a senior Taliban commander from eastern Nangarhar province whose release was sought by the Afghan High Peace Council although he had been implicated in several major attacks against coalition and Afghan forces.
--more--"
Also see: Pakistan Sabotaged Taliban Peace Talks
Why would they want to do that?
"Pakistani girl shot by Taliban won’t back down; Teen renews plea for education for girls" by Sylvia Hui | Associated Press, February 05, 2013
LONDON — Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, said Monday that the government is ready to hold peace talks with domestic Taliban militants who have been waging a bloody insurgency that has killed thousands of people in the country.
Malik’s comments were the latest sign of growing momentum for talks and followed statements by senior Pakistani Taliban leaders, who also indicate they are ready to sit down at the negotiating table.
The government appeared to have dropped an earlier demand that the Taliban lay down their weapons and renounce violence prior to the talks, a position rejected by the militants.
Ruling party lawmakers say one key issue driving the government toward talks — which have the blessing of the country’s powerful military — is concern about violence in advance of parliamentary elections expected this spring.
--more--"
Of course, peace talk is always sabotaged by the "terrorists."
"Politicians seek peace talks as Pakistani Taliban kill 18; Many skeptics doubt militants want to end strife" by RIAZ KHAN and HUSSAIN AFZAL | Associated Press, February 15, 2013
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Politicians called for peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban on Thursday as the group killed 18 people in a pair of bombings in the country’s northwest on a police post and a vehicle carrying anti-Taliban militiamen.
The call for peace negotiations followed a meeting of many of the country’s main political parties in the capital, Islamabad, to discuss the issue. Momentum for peace talks has grown in recent weeks as both the Taliban and the government have said they are interested....
There are many skeptics who doubt the militants truly want peace....
They are very likely the ones making and getting the most from war.
Others say there is no alternative to negotiations since numerous military operations targeting the Taliban’s sanctuaries in the northwest have failed to break the group’s back.
That's because THEY LIVE THERE!
But it is uncertain how much common ground the two sides would find if they met face-to-face. The Taliban have demanded that Pakistan sever ties with the United States and impose Islamic law in the country. Neither the country’s elected leaders nor the military have shown any inclination to agree to those demands....
Meaning peace is going nowhere as war accelerates.
--more--"
"Against odds, a push for Afghan peace talks; Major players sharply divided as effort resumes" by Alissa J. Rubin | New York Times, February 17, 2013
KABUL — Suddenly, the effort to strike a deal with the Taliban is very publicly back on the front burner.
After the process was frozen for months last year as fighting raged in Afghanistan and election-year politics consumed US attention, diplomats and political leaders from eight countries are now mounting the most concerted campaign to date to bring the Afghan government and its Taliban foes together to negotiate a peace deal.
Related: Long Forgotten Afghanistan Post
The latest push came early this month at Chequers, the country residence of the British prime minister, David Cameron, who joined President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan in calling for fast-track peace talks. Weeks earlier in Washington, Karzai met with President Obama and committed publicly to have his representatives meet a Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar, to start the process.
Yet so far the renergized reach for peace has achieved little, officials say, except to cement a growing consensus that regional stability demands some sort of political settlement with the Taliban, after a war that cost tens of thousands of Afghan and Western lives.
Interviews with officials involved in the effort suggest a process that has yet to gain real traction and seems to have little chance of achieving even its most limited goal: bringing the Afghan government and Taliban leadership together at the table before most US forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.
‘‘The year 2014 has begun to be seen as a magical date, both inside and outside Afghanistan,’’ said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser. ‘‘It’s difficult to find what is realistic and what is illusion.’’
I am reading a newspaper. How did he know?
That is not least because the major players — Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States, and the Taliban — have fundamentally different visions of how to achieve a post-2014 peace, according to accounts of setbacks in the process.
For the Afghans, the simple act of considering what a peace deal might look like has inflamed factional differences that are still raw two decades after the country’s civil war.
The Afghan High Peace Council, which Karzai has empowered to negotiate for his government, has put forward a document called ‘‘Peace Process Roadmap to 2015.’’
While many Afghan leaders say they have not seen the proposal, first reported by the McClatchy news service in December, those who have view it as outlining a striking number of potential concessions to the Taliban and to Pakistan.
They include provisions for the Taliban’s becoming a political party and anticipation that some of the most important government positions could be open to them, including cabinet positions.
You know, it didn't seem to be a problem before.
--more--"
Good a time as any to remind you those Taliban can't be trusted:
"Freed Taliban back as insurgents, Pakistani official says" by Kathy Gannon | Associated Press, February 22, 2013
ISLAMABAD — At least half the Afghan Taliban recently freed from Pakistani prisons have rejoined the insurgency, a Pakistani intelligence official says, throwing into question the value of such goodwill gestures that the Afghan government requested to restart a flagging peace process.
A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could talk freely confirmed that ‘‘some’’ newly freed Taliban have returned to the battlefield.
Oh, well, who could doubt that?
The development underscores the difficulties in reaching a political deal with the Taliban before the end of 2014, when NATO and US troops are scheduled to have completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Taliban released from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay have also gone underground.
Tortured Taliban buried themselves alive?
Despite some recent signs from the Taliban that they are willing to share power and want to avoid a civil war, the militants may well be playing for time until 2014. That’s also when the Afghans are scheduled to elect a new president to succeed Hamid Karzai, whom the insurgents consider an American puppet.
Well, someone is playing for time. Taliban seem to have all the time in the world. After all, they live there.
The Taliban have long refused to speak directly with Karzai or his government. They have said they will negotiate only with the United States, which has held secret talks with them in the Gulf state of Qatar. But at Karzai’s insistence, the United States has since sought to have the insurgents speak directly with the Afghan government. Western officials privately say that the talks have so far gone no further.
At the request of the Afghan High Peace Council late last year, Pakistan freed 24 prisoners to coax a reluctant Taliban leadership to talk peace directly with Karzai’s government, according to Ismail Qasemyar, a senior peace council official.
The freed prisoners are all Afghan Taliban, who are battling NATO and US troops in Afghanistan. Many of these fighters use neighboring Pakistan as a home base, particularly in winter months.
The release of the prisoners appears to have backfired, however, with the intelligence official saying about half of them have returned to the Taliban. The outcome is further testing an already troubled relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and drawing US complaints that Pakistan has not done enough to keep track of the freed Taliban.
Frustrated by the criticism, Islamabad said it doesn’t have the resources to track the prisoners and that no request was made to follow the freed Taliban or to hand them over to the Afghan government. Afghan authorities have also released Taliban prisoners from their own jails, occasionally over the objections of the US military, and have since lost track of many of them.
Oh, no, untracked terrorists roaming the Globe! Prepare for a false flag attack!
When Pakistan has arrested Afghan Taliban fighters in recent years, it has often come in response to pressure from the United States or with American assistance.
Oh, the peace process was shut down at AmeriKan insistence, 'eh? Tired of the s***-fooley talk yet?
The Pakistani military is far more interested in carrying out offensives against Pakistani Taliban, who have declared war on the state of Pakistan and are responsible for tens of thousands of Pakistani deaths as well as the deaths of about 4,000 Pakistani soldiers.
Wow, that's weird. For years I've been told Pakistan is reluctant to go into North Waziristan.
But among the Afghan Taliban prisoners that Pakistan recently released at the request of the Afghan government were several it would have preferred to keep in jail, the Pakistani intelligence official said Monday.
Pakistan, for example, wanted to keep Anwar-ul-Haq Mujahed in prison, said Pakistan and Afghan officials. Mujahed was an insurgent commander responsible for most of the more spectacular attacks against US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province. But the High Peace Council insisted he be freed.
One peace council member said Mujahed’s release was demanded by Hajji Din Mohammed, former provincial governor and a peace council member. Mohammed’s links to Mujahed date to the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when he served as a senior lieutenant in the US-financed Hezb-e-Islami Khalis group run by Mujahed’s father, Younus Khalis.
That's right, folks. "Al-CIA-Duh" Taliban are a CIA CREATION!
Mohammed delayed the Afghan Peace Council’s Nov. 14 departure from Pakistan until Mujahed was released. At the time the United States also objected to his release, said a senior American official who spoke on condition of anonymity. On Dec. 1, two weeks after he was freed, a coordinated Taliban assault took place on a US base in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. There was no claim of responsibility from Mujahed.
Can the false flag be any more obvious?
In a series of interviews in the Afghan capital, members of the High Peace Council as well as Karzai’s government confirmed Pakistan’s reluctance to release some prisoners including Mujahed. They also said the releases were unconditional.
‘‘It was a risk we felt was worth taking,’’ said Amin Arsala, a senior adviser to Karzai.
--more--"
"Obama announced he placed new hope in a negotiated settlement with the Taliban after more than a decade of war."
I'm not.
Of course, peace talk is always sabotaged by the "terrorists."
"Politicians seek peace talks as Pakistani Taliban kill 18; Many skeptics doubt militants want to end strife" by RIAZ KHAN and HUSSAIN AFZAL | Associated Press, February 15, 2013
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Politicians called for peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban on Thursday as the group killed 18 people in a pair of bombings in the country’s northwest on a police post and a vehicle carrying anti-Taliban militiamen.
The call for peace negotiations followed a meeting of many of the country’s main political parties in the capital, Islamabad, to discuss the issue. Momentum for peace talks has grown in recent weeks as both the Taliban and the government have said they are interested....
There are many skeptics who doubt the militants truly want peace....
They are very likely the ones making and getting the most from war.
Others say there is no alternative to negotiations since numerous military operations targeting the Taliban’s sanctuaries in the northwest have failed to break the group’s back.
That's because THEY LIVE THERE!
But it is uncertain how much common ground the two sides would find if they met face-to-face. The Taliban have demanded that Pakistan sever ties with the United States and impose Islamic law in the country. Neither the country’s elected leaders nor the military have shown any inclination to agree to those demands....
Meaning peace is going nowhere as war accelerates.
--more--"
"Against odds, a push for Afghan peace talks; Major players sharply divided as effort resumes" by Alissa J. Rubin | New York Times, February 17, 2013
KABUL — Suddenly, the effort to strike a deal with the Taliban is very publicly back on the front burner.
After the process was frozen for months last year as fighting raged in Afghanistan and election-year politics consumed US attention, diplomats and political leaders from eight countries are now mounting the most concerted campaign to date to bring the Afghan government and its Taliban foes together to negotiate a peace deal.
Related: Long Forgotten Afghanistan Post
The latest push came early this month at Chequers, the country residence of the British prime minister, David Cameron, who joined President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan in calling for fast-track peace talks. Weeks earlier in Washington, Karzai met with President Obama and committed publicly to have his representatives meet a Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar, to start the process.
Yet so far the renergized reach for peace has achieved little, officials say, except to cement a growing consensus that regional stability demands some sort of political settlement with the Taliban, after a war that cost tens of thousands of Afghan and Western lives.
Interviews with officials involved in the effort suggest a process that has yet to gain real traction and seems to have little chance of achieving even its most limited goal: bringing the Afghan government and Taliban leadership together at the table before most US forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.
‘‘The year 2014 has begun to be seen as a magical date, both inside and outside Afghanistan,’’ said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser. ‘‘It’s difficult to find what is realistic and what is illusion.’’
I am reading a newspaper. How did he know?
That is not least because the major players — Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States, and the Taliban — have fundamentally different visions of how to achieve a post-2014 peace, according to accounts of setbacks in the process.
For the Afghans, the simple act of considering what a peace deal might look like has inflamed factional differences that are still raw two decades after the country’s civil war.
The Afghan High Peace Council, which Karzai has empowered to negotiate for his government, has put forward a document called ‘‘Peace Process Roadmap to 2015.’’
While many Afghan leaders say they have not seen the proposal, first reported by the McClatchy news service in December, those who have view it as outlining a striking number of potential concessions to the Taliban and to Pakistan.
They include provisions for the Taliban’s becoming a political party and anticipation that some of the most important government positions could be open to them, including cabinet positions.
You know, it didn't seem to be a problem before.
--more--"
Good a time as any to remind you those Taliban can't be trusted:
"Freed Taliban back as insurgents, Pakistani official says" by Kathy Gannon | Associated Press, February 22, 2013
ISLAMABAD — At least half the Afghan Taliban recently freed from Pakistani prisons have rejoined the insurgency, a Pakistani intelligence official says, throwing into question the value of such goodwill gestures that the Afghan government requested to restart a flagging peace process.
A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could talk freely confirmed that ‘‘some’’ newly freed Taliban have returned to the battlefield.
Oh, well, who could doubt that?
The development underscores the difficulties in reaching a political deal with the Taliban before the end of 2014, when NATO and US troops are scheduled to have completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Taliban released from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay have also gone underground.
Tortured Taliban buried themselves alive?
Despite some recent signs from the Taliban that they are willing to share power and want to avoid a civil war, the militants may well be playing for time until 2014. That’s also when the Afghans are scheduled to elect a new president to succeed Hamid Karzai, whom the insurgents consider an American puppet.
Well, someone is playing for time. Taliban seem to have all the time in the world. After all, they live there.
The Taliban have long refused to speak directly with Karzai or his government. They have said they will negotiate only with the United States, which has held secret talks with them in the Gulf state of Qatar. But at Karzai’s insistence, the United States has since sought to have the insurgents speak directly with the Afghan government. Western officials privately say that the talks have so far gone no further.
At the request of the Afghan High Peace Council late last year, Pakistan freed 24 prisoners to coax a reluctant Taliban leadership to talk peace directly with Karzai’s government, according to Ismail Qasemyar, a senior peace council official.
The freed prisoners are all Afghan Taliban, who are battling NATO and US troops in Afghanistan. Many of these fighters use neighboring Pakistan as a home base, particularly in winter months.
The release of the prisoners appears to have backfired, however, with the intelligence official saying about half of them have returned to the Taliban. The outcome is further testing an already troubled relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and drawing US complaints that Pakistan has not done enough to keep track of the freed Taliban.
Frustrated by the criticism, Islamabad said it doesn’t have the resources to track the prisoners and that no request was made to follow the freed Taliban or to hand them over to the Afghan government. Afghan authorities have also released Taliban prisoners from their own jails, occasionally over the objections of the US military, and have since lost track of many of them.
Oh, no, untracked terrorists roaming the Globe! Prepare for a false flag attack!
When Pakistan has arrested Afghan Taliban fighters in recent years, it has often come in response to pressure from the United States or with American assistance.
Oh, the peace process was shut down at AmeriKan insistence, 'eh? Tired of the s***-fooley talk yet?
The Pakistani military is far more interested in carrying out offensives against Pakistani Taliban, who have declared war on the state of Pakistan and are responsible for tens of thousands of Pakistani deaths as well as the deaths of about 4,000 Pakistani soldiers.
Wow, that's weird. For years I've been told Pakistan is reluctant to go into North Waziristan.
But among the Afghan Taliban prisoners that Pakistan recently released at the request of the Afghan government were several it would have preferred to keep in jail, the Pakistani intelligence official said Monday.
Pakistan, for example, wanted to keep Anwar-ul-Haq Mujahed in prison, said Pakistan and Afghan officials. Mujahed was an insurgent commander responsible for most of the more spectacular attacks against US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province. But the High Peace Council insisted he be freed.
One peace council member said Mujahed’s release was demanded by Hajji Din Mohammed, former provincial governor and a peace council member. Mohammed’s links to Mujahed date to the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when he served as a senior lieutenant in the US-financed Hezb-e-Islami Khalis group run by Mujahed’s father, Younus Khalis.
That's right, folks. "Al-CIA-Duh" Taliban are a CIA CREATION!
Mohammed delayed the Afghan Peace Council’s Nov. 14 departure from Pakistan until Mujahed was released. At the time the United States also objected to his release, said a senior American official who spoke on condition of anonymity. On Dec. 1, two weeks after he was freed, a coordinated Taliban assault took place on a US base in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. There was no claim of responsibility from Mujahed.
Can the false flag be any more obvious?
In a series of interviews in the Afghan capital, members of the High Peace Council as well as Karzai’s government confirmed Pakistan’s reluctance to release some prisoners including Mujahed. They also said the releases were unconditional.
‘‘It was a risk we felt was worth taking,’’ said Amin Arsala, a senior adviser to Karzai.
--more--"
"Obama announced he placed new hope in a negotiated settlement with the Taliban after more than a decade of war."
I'm not.
