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Former ISI chief Hamid Gul. |
While it pains me to have to quote Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency and an al Qaeda and Taliban ally, he is absolutely correct concerning the so-called high level talks with the Taliban. From Adnkronos International:
“This [claims of high-level talks with the Taliban] is nothing new. These kinds of efforts were taking place last year as well when former Taliban foreign minister Abdul Wakeel Muttawakil, former Taliban minister in Pakistan Mullah Zaeef, former Taliban federal minister Moulvi Arsala Rehmani (now a senator in Afghanistan) and a Mullah Abdul Hakeem Mujahid met in Saudi Arabia for reconciliation with the Taliban,” said Gul.
“But they admitted that they were doing that on their own initiative and not representing Taliban,” said Gul.
With his close links to the Taliban and al Qaeda, Gul certainly is in a position to know what the Taliban’s leaders think of the West’s overtures and those claiming to represent the group in negotiations.
For more on this subject, see these reports from The Long War Journal:
Taliban reject peace talks – Jan. 27, 2010
Taliban deny reports of negotiations with Afghan government – March 16, 2009
Taliban have not split from al Qaeda: sources – Oct. 7, 2008
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7 Comments
“While it pains me to have to quote Hamid Gul…”
Thank you, that made me chuckle.
Sounds like Mr Gul is much closer to the Taliban that he lets on. I think he is one. That would mean he is the enemy and shoud be captured or killed.
What are we waiting for? Ah, political correctness. That and a quarter will get us killed.
Hamid Gul is irrelevant. He chose his side long ago… his rhetoric is nothing new.
The only news I want to see about Hamid is the post detailing his decoration of some part of Pakistan with his insides.
Not so much political correctness as it is legally impossible without declaring war on Pakistan, which means losing our supply line AND inciting a million man army against the occupational forces in Afghanistan. We would win, but only pyhrrically, for a variety of reasons.
Spooky
You have inadvertently identified the gist of our flawed strategy.
That is, by keeping our troops in Afghanistan, we can’t win this war.
Remember, Pakistan has a very big hostile neighbor on the eastern front that can settle its scores with it with the right leader.
Only at the sacrifice of its economy. India is in the middle of a boom right now and will not do anything to jeopardize that. The next time those two fight will be when India’s economy resembles Pakistan’s. Also, India would have to figure out some way of eliminating the nuclear arsenal prior to the attack.
A war at this point would do more harm than good. It would probably be easier and safer to simply dismantle the Pakistani state into its four main parts and either play them against each other or have them absorbed by Afghanistan and India respectively, leaving just the rump state of Northern Punjab and AZK.
Yeah that sounds intelligent. Let’s pull out of Afghanistan and let India handle it. After all India has done a fabulous job with it’s own terrorism problem /sarcasm off