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America’s U-turn on Afghan Taliban

VelocuR

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America’s U-turn on Afghan Taliban

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Even when the US does get it right, it tends to do so for mostly the wrong reasons. The Afghan Taliban, according to a White House spokesperson, are not a terrorist organisation but an armed insurgency.

A belated, welcome realisation — and a correct one at that — on the part of the US government, but then there are the circumstances that triggered it.

The war in Afghanistan is over — at least the war that the US-led coalition was fighting since 2001 — and the fight against the Islamic State is picking up, so now it appears the time is right to do everything possible against the new enemy and try and get along with the old.

Read: White House declines to call Afghan Taliban 'terrorists'

That the White House deputy spokesperson Eric Shultz was trying to explain why it was possible to do a prisoner swap with the Afghan Taliban but not the IS makes the matter all the more farcical.

The consequences though are anything but. It was only in the very recent past after all that the US turned a blind eye as it allies in the Middle East did everything they could to topple the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad — including supplying arms and creating the conditions that led to the rise of IS.

Now, the Americans are reluctant to talk about Mr Assad and everything is about IS. But before IS and Assad, there was Iraq. And before Iraq there was Afghanistan.

And before that there was Latin America. And before that there was some other region or country in which the US made disastrous miscalculations — and then left it to others to pick up the pieces.

Also read: US may not target Mullah Omar after 2014

To be sure, the Afghan Taliban, whether designated an armed insurgency or terrorist organisation, have made some terrible decisions of their own — not least of which was the choice to align with and protect Al Qaeda on Afghan soil.

Ultimately, however, the Afghan Taliban have no ambitions outside the territory of Afghanistan, and are an inwards, nationalist movement that has little in common with the pan-Islamist ideology of groups such as Al Qaeda and the banned TTP.

While the US corrects its past mistakes — and makes new ones elsewhere — it only emphasises the need for the Afghan and Pakistani states to put their own regional house in order.

After outlasting the American will to fight and with an Afghan army and police system that is already reeling, the Afghan Taliban believe they have more reason than ever to keep the pressure on, go for outright victory and take Afghanistan back into the 1990s.

Where then is their incentive to negotiate with the Afghan government? Even some of the best-case scenarios describe a non-reconciled future as involving an Afghan government that cannot be toppled and an insurgency that cannot be defeated. The key, as ever, remains Pakistan: push the Afghan Taliban to negotiate and accept that a return to the 1990s is unacceptable.


Published in Dawn February 2nd , 2015

America’s U-turn on Afghan Taliban - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

 
of course not..............now we have only TTP as terrorists :)
nice way of justifying defeat by Mr Saim

They have absolutely no clue what they are doing on the battlefield. Bumbling mess this Afghanistan campaign has been.

Great scientists and technologists but just completely lacking in ability during war.
 
surely not international terrorists, but they are terrorists to the people of Afghanistan.
killing innocents isn't justifiable.
 
surely not international terrorists, but they are terrorists

"As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know"

Foot-in-Mouth-Award.png


:rofl:
 
surely not international terrorists, but they are terrorists to the people of Afghanistan.
killing innocents isn't justifiable.

So those who US and ISAF fought for 14 years and in the mean time thousand's of allied troops got killed fighting them and in the end they have become all of a sudden not-terrorists...:haha:
 
"As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know"

Foot-in-Mouth-Award.png


:rofl:

I just don't know what you know about these unknown knowns

So those who US and ISAF fought for 14 years and in the mean time thousand's of allied troops got killed fighting them and in the end they have become all of a sudden not-terrorists...:haha:

Afghanistan harbors international terrorists. As well does Pakistan.
Hell the whole region is a terrorist haven :D
 
I just don't know what you know about these unknown knowns



Afghanistan harbors international terrorists. As well does Pakistan.
Hell the whole region is a terrorist haven :D

Who know's today's terrorists are tomorrow's non-terrorists but wait US just did it so i will take who is terrorist and who is not from a yankee with a pinch of salt..:lol:
 
Who know's today's terrorists are tomorrow's non-terrorists but wait US just did it so i will take who is terrorist and who is not from a yankee with a pinch of salt..:lol:

from a yankee?? :rofl::rofl::rofl:
terrorist, freedom fighter fighting the evil invading yankee imperalists.
haha. good thing that crap is stuck over there and not over here. least we are keeping the terrorists ---or freedom fighters in check.


divide and conquer, right :cheers:
 
from a yankee?? :rofl::rofl::rofl:
terrorist, freedom fighter fighting the evil invading yankee imperalists.
haha. good thing that crap is stuck over there and not over here. least we are keeping the terrorists ---or freedom fighters in check.


divide and conquer, right :cheers:

Whatever floats your USS Nimitz...:P
 
Whatever floats your USS Nimitz...:P

:D :D

I never considered the Afghan Taliban as terrorists or a threat to the Yankee homeland.
Freedom fighters...or I like I consider angry bees....you get to close to the hive they go crazy and start blowing shit up.
 
There is no need to keep throwing around the magic word just because you are opposed to a group. The Taliban may well be a vicious organisation but using this criteria there are any number of organisations around the world which should be classed as terrorist in nature but aren't.

It's also confusing as to just who are "the Taliban" and who aren't. In a BBC documentary one of the British commanders claimed that the way they decided whether or not somebody was in the Taliban was whether or not they were shooting at them. This led to a situation where clans in dispute with one another would go to the British and claim that their opponents were Taliban
 
surely not international terrorists, but they are terrorists to the people of Afghanistan.
killing innocents isn't justifiable.
killing innocent people is terrorism. NATO has killed much large number of people than Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan..........so who is the bigger terrorist??
 
US cannot defeat them, US has lost the war & now they have decided not to call them terrorists, it were these very same people whom US accused of carrying out 9/11 & so on. I wonder what the people of US must be thinking now after this statement because they were fooled by then's US Govt. led by George Bush that these people were enemy of US, they are terrorists & so on.
 

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