WASHINGTON — The Taliban signaled a breakthrough in efforts to open Afghan peace negotiations Tuesday, announcing the opening of a political office in Qatar and new readiness to talk with US and Afghan officials, who said in turn that they would travel to meet insurgent negotiators there within days....
I'm not against it. Should have happened long, long ago.
The Taliban overture coincided with an important symbolic moment....
Related: Afghan troops take lead on security in every province
Symbolic semantics mean s***!
Yet since at least 2009, even top US generals maintained that it could not be won on the battlefield, and US diplomats have engaged in nearly three years of secret meetings and working through diplomatic back channels to lay the groundwork for talks to begin.
All those lives lost when they knew the war couldn't be won. That's criminal.
Ever notice wars begin within weeks yet it takes peace years?
Diplomats and intermediaries from Germany, Norway, and Britain have also played crucial roles, administration officials said Tuesday, and some said they believed Pakistan had played a more active role in recent months to urge the exiled Taliban leadership to move toward talks.
President Obama called the Taliban’s announcement “an important first step toward reconciliation,” but cautioned that it was only “a very early step.”
“We anticipate there will be a lot of bumps in the road,” Obama said at a meeting with President François Hollande of France at the Group of Eight summit meeting in Northern Ireland.
There have been plenty of bumps already. Over the past 18 months, the peace effort has encountered pressure from nearly every quarter at one time or another: President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the exiled Taliban leadership, the Taliban’s patrons in Pakistan, and critics in the United States who have reacted coolly to what they perceive as talking to terrorists.
A pair of Afghan mullahs in black turbans made the Taliban announcement in a televised address broadcast from Doha, the capital of Qatar. The Taliban’s political and military goals “are limited to Afghanistan,” said Muhammad Naim, the Taliban spokesman who read the statement.
The Taliban “would not allow anyone to threaten the security of other countries from the soil of Afghanistan,” Naim added, and seeks “a political and peaceful solution” to the conflict.
The appearance seemed to answer one immediate question hanging over the peace efforts: who was empowered to speak for the Taliban’s secretive leader in exile, Mullah Muhammad Omar....
As well, the Taliban’s wording Tuesday adhered to previous requirements by US officials in informal talks in recent weeks, officials said. In particular, the statement represented the beginning of what is hoped will become a public break with Al Qaeda, which the Taliban sheltered before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the officials said....
Related: Taliban I Told You So
They were never with "Al-CIA-Duh."
Along with getting the Taliban to disown international terrorist groups, the ultimate goal of the talks, from a Western and Afghan government point of view, is to persuade the Taliban to disarm and to accept the Afghan Constitution. While Western officials have in the past suggested that the constitution can be changed, the Obama administration stressed Tuesday that accepting the current charter’s “protections for women and minorities” was considered a condition of any eventual peace deal.
Really?
"The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997."
How times change.
In the shorter term, US officials said US envoys are to meet this week with Taliban representatives in Qatar, and then members of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, which is to represent the government in talks, are to travel to the Persian Gulf emirate to sit down with the insurgents.
But the first meetings will probably feature little more than an exchange of agendas, another senior administration official said, cautioning against expectations for the talks to yield substantive results any time soon.
“There is no guarantee that this will happen quickly, if at all,” the official said....
Then what is all this agenda-pushing crap passing as news in my newspaper?
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So how can peace be derailed again?
"US presses Taliban to back down on Qatar office" by Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland | New York Times, June 20, 2013
KABUL — In a diplomatic scramble to keep alive the possibility of peace talks with the Taliban, US officials on Wednesday pressed the insurgents to backtrack on their effort to present themselves as essentially an alternative government at the office they opened on Tuesday in Qatar, Afghan officials said.
Related:
Afghans Increasingly Turning to Taliban’s Shadow Govt
Reports of a Taliban “shadow government” complete with its own court system are not new. Indeed, we’ve been covering the phenomenon for well over a year, and it has only grown as the group’s influence has gained. Despite assurances from the Karzai government that they are in full control of the situation, the reality on the ground suggests they are not. Even NATO, the Karzai government’s international muscle, concedes that the Taliban is already setting up a “government in waiting,” ready to return to power the second the Karzai government crumbles.
Yeah, I'VE KNOWN THAT for a WHILE NOW!
This is the LAME -ASS EXCUSE to SCUTTLE TALKS?
The Afghan government, furious that assurances from the Americans that the Taliban would not use the Doha office for political or fund-raising purposes had been flouted, had suspended bilateral security talks with the Americans earlier Wednesday and said they would not send their peace emissaries to Qatar to talk to the Taliban until there was a change.
US officials, worried that painstaking efforts to restart the peace process after 18 months of deadlock were crumbling right at a breakthrough moment, moved quickly to try to resolve the Afghan government’s objections to what increasingly appeared to be a publicity coup by the Taliban.
Afghans of nearly every political stripe expressed outrage and concern at widely broadcast news images of insurgent envoys raising the white Taliban flag from their days in power and speaking as if they had set up an embassy for a government in exile — including raising a sign that described the office as the political office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the formal name of the old Taliban government. Qatari-based news organizations, including Al Jazeera, later broadcast several interviews with the envoys making their case for international attention.
Hours after President Hamid Karzai canceled talks with the Americans over a post-2014 security agreement, accusing the Americans of saying one thing and doing another, and then boycotting the Qatar peace talks, his spokesman said that he had received assurances from US of State John Kerry that the Taliban office would be curbed....
Wouldn't be the first time.
Kerry told him that Qatar’s government had assured that the Taliban’s office in the capital, Doha, had removed the Islamic Emirate sign....
Yeah, this was all over a f***ing sign, that's why they can't talk peace.
However, there was much to repair from the events of the past two days, and the Afghans said they felt betrayed.
Taliban has at least half of the public support in Afghanistan, so this is all propaganda poop from my war paper.
In lashing out, Karzai again showed his willingness to unilaterally halt US initiatives when his allies displeased him, after reining in US detention operations and special operations missions earlier this year....
At the same time, it became increasingly apparent that the Taliban were seizing the peace process as a stage for publicity....
Meanwhile, the Taliban played to the cameras.
All right, that does it. I can't stand this rank shit pot-hollering-kettle piss-poor media. When it's western or USraeli leaders celebrating some false flag or some ceremony for some agenda-pushing victory it's all good!
Opening their Doha office with a lavish ceremony that included a ribbon-cutting and the playing of the Taliban anthem, insurgent officials said they intended to use the site to meet with representatives of the international community and the United Nations, interact with the news media, “improve relations with countries around the world” and, almost as an afterthought, meet “Afghans if there is a need.” They did not mention the Afghan government.
The statement from Karzai’s office said: “The way the Taliban office was opened in Qatar and the messages which were sent from it was in absolute contrast with all the guarantees that the United States of America had pledged.”
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"Bowe Bergdahl Trade: Taliban Offer To Hand Over Captive U.S. Soldier For 5 Senior Operatives" by KATHY GANNON and KAY JOHNSON
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban proposed a deal in which they would free a U.S. soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their most senior operatives at Guantanamo Bay, while Afghan President Hamid Karzai eased his opposition Thursday to joining planned peace talks.
The idea of releasing these Taliban prisoners has been controversial. U.S. negotiators hope they would join the peace process but fear they might simply return to the battlefield, and Karzai once scuttled a similar deal partly because he felt the Americans were usurping his authority.
The proposal to trade U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for the Taliban detainees was made by senior Taliban spokesman Shaheen Suhail in response to a question during a phone interview with The Associated Press from the militants' newly opened political office in Doha, the capital of the Gulf nation of Qatar.
Related: Sunday Globe Censorship: Abducted American Video a False-Flag Fake
The Taliban Tool to Keep AmeriKa in Afghanistan
Don't know which CIA hotel room he is in, either.
The prisoner exchange is the first item on the Taliban's agenda before even starting peace talks with the U.S., said Suhail, a top Taliban figure who served as first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad before the Taliban government's ouster in 2001.
"First has to be the release of detainees," Suhail said Thursday when asked about Bergdahl. "Yes. It would be an exchange. Then step by step, we want to build bridges of confidence to go forward."
The Obama administration was noncommittal about the proposal, which it said it had expected the Taliban to make....
Bergdahl, 27, of Hailey, Idaho, is the only known American soldier held captive from the Afghan war. He disappeared from his base in southeastern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009, and is believed held in Pakistan. Suhail said Bergdahl "is, as far as I know, in good condition."
Donna Thibedeau-Eddy, who has spent the last few days at the Idaho home of the soldier's parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, said the family was hopeful.
"I was with his Mom and Dad this morning when they got the news of the exchange offer. They were ecstatic," said Thibedeau-Eddy. "They actually saw the news before they got the call from the military. Bob saw it online and said `Jani, Donna, look at this.'"
While there have been talks before, Bob Bergdahl is putting more faith and hope into the latest developments because it appears the Taliban are taking the initiative, Thibedeau-Eddy said.
Bergdahl's parents received a letter this month from their son through the International Committee of the Red Cross. They did not release details of the letter. The soldier's captivity has been marked by only sporadic releases of videos and information about his whereabouts.
The hallmark of a psyop.
Related: Family of POW says it has received a letter from him
Oh, now I'm convinced.
The reconciliation process with the Taliban – seen by most as the only way to end the nearly 12-year war – has been a long and bumpy one.
The U.S. began secret talks with the militants more than two years ago in off-and-on discussions that lasted several months.
The two sides discussed prisoner exchanges and for a brief time it appeared that the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners would be released and sent to Qatar to help further the peace process.
But since then, the U.S. has been trying to jumpstart peace talks and the Taliban have made several offers – including sharing power in Kabul. The Taliban have also attended several international conferences and held meetings with representatives of about 30 countries.
If the Taliban hold talks with American delegates in the next few days, they will be the first U.S.-Taliban talks in nearly 1 1/2 years.
Related: Taliban delegation in Qatar since 2010 sits idle
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was expected in Doha ahead of a conference there scheduled for Saturday on the Syrian civil war. He was not expected to meet with the Taliban although other U.S. officials might in coming days.
More global-warming-inducing jet travel, 'eh?
Prospective peace talks were again thrown into question Wednesday when Karzai became infuriated by the Taliban's move to cast their new office in Doha as a rival embassy.
The Taliban held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday in which they hoisted their flag and a banner that evoked the name they used while in power more than a decade ago: "Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." Later, the Taliban replaced the sign to read simply: "Political office of the Taliban."
At the ceremony, the Taliban welcomed dialogue with Washington but said their fighters would not stop fighting....
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That was what my printed paper gave me. Web gave you this NYT POS:
"Prisoner swap could be key to future Taliban peace talks; American soldier offered for 5 held at Guantanamo" by Charlie Savage | New York Times, June 21, 2013
WASHINGTON — Two were senior Taliban commanders said to be implicated in murdering thousands of Shi’ites in Afghanistan.
Then they are allies against Iran and Syria, right?
When asked about the alleged war crimes by an interrogator, they “did not express any regret and stated they did what they needed to do in their struggle to establish their ideal state,” according to the interrogators.
Are you sure they aren't Israeli?
There is also a former deputy director of Taliban intelligence, a former senior Taliban official said to have “strong operational ties” to various extremist militias, and a former Taliban minister accused of having sought help from Iran in attacking US forces.
These five prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could be the key to whether the negotiations the United States has long sought with the Taliban are a success, or even take place. A Taliban spokesman in Qatar said Thursday that exchanging them for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a US prisoner of war who has been held by militants since 2009, may “build bridges of confidence” to start broader peace talks.
A few weeks ago, President Obama gave a speech reiterating his desire to close Guantánamo. But one official familiar with internal deliberations emphasized that any exchange involving the Afghan prisoners should not be seen as part of efforts the president has ordered to winnow the prison of low-level detainees.
The five Taliban members are considered to be among the most senior militants at Guantánamo and would otherwise be among the last in line to leave.
The Taliban offer, made at the same time they were opening a long-delayed office in Doha, Qatar, breathed new life into a late-2011 proposal that collapsed amid congressional skepticism and the strict security conditions the Obama administration sought as part of any exchange. They included the stipulation that the Taliban prisoners be sent to Qatar and forbidden to leave.
Those conditions, created by the Obama administration to comply with legal restrictions imposed by Congress to prevent any detainees from returning to the battlefield in Afghanistan, led the Taliban to walk away from the negotiations. It is not clear whether the Taliban position on transfers to Qatar, as opposed to outright release and repatriation, has softened.
Any prisoner release, according to officials familiar with the deliberations, is not imminent. The transfer restrictions require 30 days’ notice to lawmakers before any detainee leaves, and the administration has not yet given any notification. The officials would not comment on the record because of the diplomatic and political delicacy of the issue.
More is known about the five former Taliban members than other Guantánamo prisoners, because the details of their alleged roles were described in government files given to WikiLeaks by Private First Class Bradley Manning, who is now being court-martialed and faces a possible life sentence if convicted. Because the five men have never been given a trial, the quality of the evidence and the credibility of the claims against them in the files have not been tested.
Related: Government Snow Job?
Turns out Wikileaks is nothing more than Israeli blackmail outfit. Who do you think scooped up all the State Department communications?
Mohammad Nabi Omari is described in the files as “one of the most significant former Taliban leaders detained” at Guantánamo. He is said to have strong operational ties to anti-coalition militia groups including Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Haqqani network. He is also accused of participating in a cell in Khost that was “involved in attacks against US and coalition forces,” maintaining weapons caches and smuggling fighters and weapons.
Related: Haqqani Ha-Ha
That and the "toilet" humor just ain't funny anymore.
A former Taliban provincial governor, Mullah Norullah Noori, is also “considered one of the most significant former Taliban officials” at the prison, according to the documents. A founding member of the organization, he was a senior military commander against US forces and their allies in late 2001.
Both Noori and a third detainee being considered in an exchange, Mullah Mohammad Fazl, a former Taliban deputy defense minister, are accused of having commanded forces that killed thousands of Shi’ite Muslims, a minority in Afghanistan, before the Taliban were toppled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The fourth is Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former top Taliban intelligence official described as “central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against US and coalition forces after the 11 September 2001 attacks.” He also helped al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters evade capture and arranged for Al Qaeda to train Taliban in intelligence methods, the WikiLeaks documents report.
The fifth prisoner, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, a former minister of the interior and provincial governor, has contended that he had direct ties to Osama bin Laden and represented the Taliban in talks with Iranian officials seeking their support after Sept. 11, the documents read.
Well, NOW the Wikileaks toilet is overflowing!
Yeah, they hate Shi'ites worse than infidels do the Sunni Taliban and CIA-Duh supporters, but they were trying to get with Iran (after the two had nearly come to war in the 1990s over the border).
If backing up and confirming the Jewish war propaganda isn't enough to convince you of Wikileaks true nature, nothing will. Remember, the first leak was Iran is building a bomb bulls***.
He is also accused of using his position to “become one of the major opium drug lords in Western Afghanistan.”
Related: Afghans Need Taliban Return
Not because they were addicted.
Drug money saved banks in global crisis
There are your addicts.
U.S. Gardening in Afghanistan
WHAT OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING FOR IN AFGHANISTAN
Hey, what is A FEW MORE LIES in a NEWSPAPER FULL OF THEM EVERY DAMN DAY!!!!!!!?????????
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: The New York Times Smokes Opium
Oh, so that's why they churn out such s***.
Described as “extremely intelligent,” Khairkhwa is said to have claimed to be motivated by public service rather than ideology and pledged to support President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who has called for his release.
The five Taliban leaders are just a subset of 18 Afghans remaining at Guantánamo — out of the 220 taken there by the Bush administration. But the other 13 are accused of far less serious and specific actions, meaning that they are not important enough to be bargaining chips.
And all are innocent.
With US troops still on the ground in Afghanistan, both Obama administration and congressional officials say there is genuine concern about releasing high-level leaders if there is any prospect that they could return to rally new attacks.
Translation: This is all MUCH ADO about NOTHING! It's to get your mind off the shit situation the U.S. finds itself in Afghanistan.
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I suppose it was all an April Fool's joke, and I no longer talk peace talk seriously from a war paper, sorry.
Related:
Truce Talks With Taliban Underway in Saudi Arabia
That was five years ago, pffft.
Peace Talk Post
U.S. Talking to Itself in Talks With Taliban
No wonder there is no end to the war.
CIA Assets Attack AmeriKan Convoy in Afghanistan
Can't talk to those people.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Taliban name, flag disputes threaten talks; Indefinite delay over Qatar office" by Rod Nordland | New York Times, June 22, 2013
DOHA, Qatar — Taliban leaders were debating Friday whether to cancel peace talks with the Americans and the Afghan government because of criticism of their use of their flag and formal name at their new office here.
I'm so, so tired of having my hopes raised then dashed by the war-promoting instrument of propaganda known as the AmeriKan media.
A senior Taliban official, speaking by telephone from Pakistan, said the insurgents were determined to keep their flag and also a sign declaring that the office belonged to the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” despite furious reaction from the Afghan government.
“The governments of America and of Qatar backtracked on the promise they made to us on the flag and the name,” the official said. “It was agreed we could use them. But because of the Kabul regime they backtracked.” The official, who indicated that he was in regular contact with Taliban delegates here, spoke on condition of anonymity because the group’s leaders in Quetta, Pakistan, have canceled all interviews until they decide on a unified public response over the flag issue.
US officials insisted that no such assurances had been made to the Taliban, and the government of Qatar said the office could be known only as “the political bureau of the Afghan Taliban in Doha.”
US officials had been expected to arrive in Doha on Thursday to begin talks, but the dispute caused an indefinite delay. Afghan government representatives say they no longer plan to come to Qatar.
When the Taliban office opened Wednesday, the militants were expected to publicly renounce the use of Afghan territory for international terrorism, which the US government hoped would lead to a more explicit break with Al Qaeda, a longtime Taliban ally....
They did. they said they are just concerned with territory of Afghanistan and pose no threat to outside world (or was that mistranslated in my newspaper?).
With the office in the West Bay quarter of the Qatari capital, an area thick with embassies and their flags, the Taliban flag seemed to signal an attempt to create a rival Afghan embassy. Taliban statements that the office would handle contacts and dialogue with foreign countries, international agencies, and the press heightened that impression. Afghan and US officials have publicly insisted that any Taliban office in Qatar be used only for the purpose of getting peace talks started.
Afghan officials responded Wednesday by breaking off talks with the United States on an agreement for a continuing US military presence after 2014 to protest what they said was a “contradiction between acts and statements made by the United States of America in regard to the peace process.”
Yeah, we aren't really leaving as the common narrative usually suggests.
That was a reference to the banner and name issues, as well as to Taliban statements indicating that they intended the office to be more than just the location of a peace initiative.
WTF? They were having secret talks for years and met with reps from over 30 countries? At this point you realize this is all propaganda, it's not serious, it's for public consumption, it's imagery for the alleged withdrawal, blah, blah, blah, blah. All getting scuttled over a flag and a name?
In response to pressure from Qatari officials, the Taliban removed the sign that declared the office the Islamic emirate and lowered their flag so that it could no longer be seen from outside the compound.
But the official in Pakistan stressed that the Taliban had no intention of removing the emblems entirely, and would keep placards inside the building using the Islamic emirate name and continue to fly the flag.
“This negotiation is not going anywhere at the moment,” the official said....
Why not just close the office then? I've seen this movie before.
Though the flag and name issue have drawn the most attention from all sides, the dispute goes deeper than symbolism.
Have I mentioned lately how sick I am of being served up imagery, illusion, and symbolism in my newspaper?
The Afghans say the office in Qatar cannot act as the embassy of a government in exile, while the Taliban depict it as pretty much just that.
Afghan officials were also concerned that the initial Taliban statement was as much a renewed declaration of war as a promise to open an office dedicated to peace....
Yeah, okay. I think I've made my point and don' want to talk about it anymore.
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