Another op-ed piece has appeared on the Taliban’s Voice of Jihad webpage (English language version here and PDF at non-terrorist page here). Here’s the most interesting part of the latest article:
Washington turns down the constructive proposal of the leadership of Mujahideen who say that the Mujahideen, as a part of their policy, will ensure that the next government of the Mujahiideen will not meddle in the internal affairs of other countries including the neighbours if the foreign troops pull out of Afghanistan. But still America and its Allies want to achieve their imperialistic goals under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
I stand to be corrected, but while we’ve seen individuals identifying themselves as Taliban saying “you leave, we leave you alone,” and others suggesting conditions that could lead to a national loya jirga with Taliban participation, this is the first I’ve seen in the past year of any statement made or endorsed by the Taliban saying its leadership has made an official offer. This is a shift from a statement made in March of this year that said, “If you wait for 3000 years, our stand is the same that Taliban will never hold talks in presence of invader forces in Afghanistan.”
Another thing that caught my eye was this bit of (what looks like) playing to the Pashtun audience:
The criminal aspect of this war is that, that the invading Americans have focussed on Pashtun areas and their conduct of the war seem more like a Pashtun cleansing campaign.
More proof the Taliban reads the papers:
This year, the Nobel Prize Committee in Sweden awarded Peace Prize to Obama while his being in the White House less than ten days before the nomination deadline …. As for the Afghans, they did not expect Obama, a Nobel peace prize winner, to flare up the war in the country. Nor the Alfred Nobel would ever have agreed to give peace prize to a person who is fanning flames of war rather than spreading fraternity and peace.
A bit of a counterpoint to reports of recent (and not-so-recent ISAF) ops in Helmand as well:
According to a recent report from Mujahideen in Helmand province …. the enemy has only been able to keep the districts which were earlier in their hands in north Helmand. In the south, the writ of Mujahideen was restored in Khanshin, Marji and Garam Sir districts while the enemy could build only a single military base in a desert there*the only spectacular achievement of the operations. But they are not able to procure their logistics through lands routes. They have to provide logistics by air transportations. In Nad Ali, the invading troops were forced to evacuate the base, which they had formed at the start of the offensive. In Garam Sir, they are trying to beef up their former bases. No new base has been added there. The British soldiers occupied some areas in Babaji, Pashak and the White Mosque but they were not able to retain them for a longer period in face of the constant attacks by the Mujahideen.
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2 Comments
Interesting. My guess is that this and a few other disingenuous moves the Taliban have made recently to try to paint themselves as uninterested in broader objectives indicate that they may have seen the writing on the wall and are looking for a way out – in this case through negotiations. I haven’t gotten the impression the last year went very well for them and I doubt they relish the thought of facing down 40,000 more Coalition troops and a rapidly growing Afghan military.
Maybe they have all the watches and we have all the time now? That’s kind of a good feeling.
The Taliban (which never operated outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan) insists that they have no control over al-Qaeda (which does make strikes in the west), but will continue to treat them as honored guests if the Taliban controls Afghanistan.
So from a lawyer’s point of view, the Taliban is truthful. From a historic and military point of view their proposal is merely to return to the pre-9/11 situation, and does not differ substantially from theri previous proposals which were rejected for obvious reasons.