[Marxism] NY Times: Taliban terms for ending war in Afghanistan

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/asia/21kabul.html

May 21, 2009
U.S. Pullout a Condition in Afghan Peace Talks 
By DEXTER FILKINS
KABUL, Afghanistan ? Leaders of the Taliban and other armed groups battling
the Afghan government are talking to intermediaries about a potential peace
agreement, with initial demands focused on a timetable for a withdrawal of
American troops, according to Afghan leaders here and in Pakistan.

The talks, if not the withdrawal proposals, are being supported by the
Afghan government. The Obama administration, which has publicly declared its
desire to coax ?moderate? Taliban fighters away from armed struggle, says it
is not involved in the discussions and will not be until the Taliban agree
to lay down their arms. But nor is it trying to stop the talks, and Afghan
officials believe they have tacit support from the Americans.

The discussions have so far produced no agreements, since the insurgents
appear to be insisting that any deal include an American promise to pull out
? at the very time that the Obama administration is sending more combat
troops to help reverse the deteriorating situation on the battlefield.
Indeed, with 20,000 additional troops on the way, American commanders seem
determined to inflict greater pain on the Taliban first, to push them into
negotiations and extract better terms. And most of the initial demands are
nonstarters for the Americans in any case.

Even so, the talks are significant because they suggest how a political
settlement may be able to end the eight-year-old war, and how such
negotiations may proceed. They also raise the prospect of potentially
difficult decisions by President Hamid Karzai and President Obama, who may
have to consider making deals with groups like the Taliban that are anathema
to many Americans, and other leaders with brutal and bloody pasts. Some of
the leaders in the current talks have been involved with Al Qaeda. 

While the talks have been under way for months, they have accelerated since
Mr. Obama took office and have produced more specific demands, the Afghan
intermediaries said. 

The Taliban leaders, through their spokesman, and those of other armed
groups publicly deny that they are involved in any negotiations. But several
Afghans here and in Pakistan say they have been talking directly to the
Taliban leadership group headed by Mullah Muhammad Omar, the movement?s
secretive founder. The council is based in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Discussions have also been held with representatives of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,
a longtime warlord with a record of extreme brutality, and with Sirajuddin
Haqqani, whose guerrilla army is based in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Mr.
Haqqani?s group is also known for its ruthlessness and for sending suicide
bombers into Afghanistan.

?America cannot win this war, and the Taliban cannot win this war,? Mullah
Abdul Salaam Zaeef, a former Taliban ambassador and one of the
intermediaries, said in an interview. ?I have delivered this message to the
Taliban.?

The talks under way now appear to be directed not at individual bands of
antigovernment insurgents ? the strategy suggested by President Obama ? but
at the leaders of the large movements.

American officials insist they are not participating in any talks. ?The U.S.
would support such efforts only if Taliban are willing to abandon violence
and lay down their arms, and accept Afghanistan?s democratically elected
government,? said Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman. Still, two of the
principal intermediaries, Mr. Zaeef and Daoud Abedi, said they had held
extensive discussions with American officials. 

A State Department memo described a single meeting with Mr. Abedi, but said
it ended abruptly because American officials were not permitted to meet with
representatives of Mr. Hekmatyar. There is no independent confirmation of
Mr. Zaeef ?s claim to have met with Americans.

Afghan officials said they welcomed the talks. ?The government has kept all
channels of communication open," said Homayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Mr.
Karzai. ?This includes the Taliban and Hekmatyar.?

Mr. Abedi, an Afghan-American businessman from California and a member of
Mr. Hekmatyar?s political party, the Islamic Party, said he conducted
negotiations in March. Guerrillas loyal to Mr. Hekmatyar are battling the
Americans in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. His political party still
has a wide following in the country. 

In an interview, Mr. Abedi said he undertook the negotiations ? with Mr.
Hekmatyar and with the Taliban leaders ? at the behest of the State
Department, a claim that American officials deny. Mr. Abedi said he met
several times with American officials in Washington before and after his
trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He declined to say which American
diplomats he met, saying, ?I am a Pashtun, and I swore on my honor that I
would not reveal the names of the people I met with, so I cannot.?

Mr. Abedi said he hammered out a common set of demands between the Taliban
and Mr. Hekmatyar?s group. The groups agreed to stop fighting if those
conditions were met, Mr. Abedi said. The Taliban?s demands seem incompatible
with much of Mr. Obama?s strategy, which is to substantially weaken the
Taliban through a combination of military force and economic development. 

Nor did the deal Mr. Abedi described mention either Osama bin Laden or Ayman
al-Zawahri, the two senior Qaeda leaders believed to be hiding in Pakistan
under the protection of the Taliban or some other armed group.

The first demand was an immediate pullback of American and other foreign
forces to their bases, followed by a cease-fire and a total withdrawal from
the country over the next 18 months. Then the current government would be
replaced by a transitional government made up of a range of Afghan leaders,
including those of the Taliban and other insurgents. Americans and other
foreign soldiers would be replaced with a peacekeeping force drawn from
predominantly Muslim nations, with a guarantee from the insurgent groups
that they would not attack such a force. Nationwide elections would follow
after the Western forces left.

As for Mr. Hekmatyar, Mr. Abedi said that he maintained a ?direct link? with
him, and that he was authorized to negotiate on his behalf. He did not meet
with Afghan government officials.

After the agreement between the Taliban and the Islamic Party was reached,
Mr. Abedi said, the Taliban leaders added more conditions: an end to the
drone attacks in Pakistan?s tribal areas, and the release of some Taliban
prisoners.

Mr. Abedi said that when he returned to the United States with his proposal,
he was greeted with enthusiasm by officials at the State Department. But he
said they never called him back.

Mr. Hekmatyar earned a reputation as an especially brutal commander in the
civil war that engulfed the country in the 1990s, in particular for the
relentless bombardment of Kabul between 1994 and 1996 that killed an
estimated 40,000 civilians during an attempt to capture the capital. 

In 2002, after Mr. Hekmatyar resisted the American invasion, the Americans
tried to kill him with a missile fired from a remotely piloted airplane.
They missed.


The other main negotiation is led by Mr. Zaeef and Arsallah Rahmani, a
former Taliban minister and now a member of the Afghan Parliament. 

?We are not talking to low-ranking people ? we are talking to the leaders,?
Mr. Rahmani said in an interview. Mr. Zaeef was the Taliban?s ambassador to
Pakistan; he served nearly four years in American military prisons,
including the one at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Their plan would be for the guerrillas and the government to reconcile
slowly, starting with the least contentious issues. One of the main
low-level demands of the opposition leaders is that their names be removed
from a so-called blacklist, contained in a resolution passed by the United
Nations Security Council, which obliges governments to detain them. More
difficult issues would follow.

?Blood begets blood, but talking begets peace,? Mr. Rahmani said.

Mr. Zaeef said the public declarations of Mullah Omar, who usually vows to
fight on, are not necessarily to be taken seriously.

?A policy can have many faces,? he said.

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting.



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