US to hold direct peace talks with Taliban.

This is a recent story that is being widely reported across multiple news sources... but doesn't seem to have a presence here on ATS.


The Taliban official says
"America and all their allies tried to defeat (us) but the result is, our power has increased and so it is a good sign that they have recognized this fact and it is good for the parties and stability in Afghanistan."

So after 12 years, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives later, the US is finally open to the idea of peace talks with the enemy. These peace talks, aimed at achieving peace in the region, show that the US has indeed come a long way since the days of "we don't negotiate with terrorists".

The Taliban, despite suffering a severe beating in 2001, have demonstrated they have the resilience to re-emerge and keep fighting the US / NATO forces to the point that "peace talks" are now being considered an option. Furthermore, the Taliban now have a shiny new office in Qatar, that is approved by the US. (pic) and uses the name "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", as it was known before the US invasion during Taliban rule. Hamid Karzai isn't too pleased about these development.

Such talks and meetings with enemy combatants have taken place before in 2011, but in secret. But with the new office and the Taliban officially being part of the talks, its clear the war has taken a peculiar turn... the Taliban who are constantly portrayed as the enemies of peace all these days, have been granted a diplomatic stage and the US seems to be have accepted that the Taliban, as Afghans, have a voice with regard to the fate of Afghanistan.


Additional reading...
al Jazeera
CNN
press tv
BBC
Fox

reply to post by sk0rpi0n
you missed one usnews.nbcnews.com... from the link

Report: Taliban offers to swap American POW for five Gitmo detainees

now if bush was in power you know what would be said ,.... could not post it here.... Obama is in so i ask... Is this a good thing? trade 5 for one of our own? or should we the US stick with " we do not negotiate with terrorist" ?

reply to post by bekod


Lets see, I see 166 as the current head count at Gitmo with 46 being named as VIP/indefinite detention cases. So... That's at least 9 more U.S. troops they'll work hard to kidnap at the going rate of 5:1, if Obama decides to deal away prisoners for one of our guys.

I love getting our people back ...but paying for them in any form simply makes kidnapping more of them a very profitable enterprise. Scary times.....

Oh...and I do wonder... How is it we can deal in good faith with a group whose sworn mission in life is the utter destruction of the Karzai Government and obliteration of U.S. forces in Afghanistan? I say we spike our equipment, destroy anything useful about the bases we've built with our own hands and just vanish like a fart in the wind one night in a massive airlift out. Leave them all scratching their heads the next day as to where all the Americans went ...as we wish them well with their civil war. It was in progress when we arrived and it will continue when we're gone.

If I remember close to correctly, this is basically what they wanted prior to our invasion in '03.
Bush, of course, would have none of it.

Yes, I know this is a whole other discussion but I thought it worth mentioning anyway.
How many lives and how much treasure has been wasted in an effort to get back to the point where we started?

reply to post by bekod

“Yes. It would be an exchange. Then, step by step, we want to build bridges of confidence to go forward.”

“We want foreign troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan,” he said. “If there are troops in Afghanistan then there will be a continuation of the war.”

The Taliban know they have a strong presence and will negotiate on their terms. Failing which, they can always go back to doing what they were for the last 12 years. They have basically wrestled the US to the diplomatic table.

They shouldn´t negotiate with terrorist.. as Quran advices believers that its ok to lie to infidels. 'Holy Lying' known as taqiyya.

reply to post by dollukka


Yup and alot of people will ignore that fact.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
. Leave them all scratching their heads the next day as to where all the Americans went ...as we wish them well with their civil war. It was in progress when we arrived and it will continue when we're gone.

Yes, it will be exactly the same as it was 13 years ago.

Except for:
- the dead soldiers
- the millions more who hate America

Is that counted as a "win"?

reply to post by alfa1


Absolutely nothing about this thing can be called a win. Nothing at all. The worst people came to power. The ones they replaced will soon be back in power as US numbers drop below the level to stop it from happening and not a damn thing has really been accomplished vs. the cost in lives for America and both lives and misery for the Afghani people. Their life was no day on the beach before we got there ....but we didn't need "made in America" stamped on their grief to add to what they already had for legacy out of past corruption of their own and the Soviets.

Nope... No one really won here. Not even the Taliban, who "technically" won this war of attrition by merely surviving as a viable force and power. What they said they'd do when this started and people laughed at in the belief of our own greatness to destroy them. I'd say this ranks right up there with Vietnam for both constructive things accomplished and the way it's going to end. The only difference between this and that war is Vietnam didn't have near the body armor technology so men died there instead of coming home broken and ruined instead.

I am not clear on exactly what it is that the Taliban and the United States need to "negotiate" about.

The Taliban was deposed as the Government of Afghanistan, and has since been replaced by another Government. It seems to me that if the Taliban wants to regain power in Afghanistan, they need to be negotiating with the current Afghanistan authorities to regain status as a legal political movement within that country. Then, they can try to form the government again through the ballot box.

If they intend to take over again by force...then they need to face off against the Afghan army and security forces. America and NATO are going home soon.

So, again, what is it that the Taliban and the U.S. need to negotiate about?

I just came across this and rather than make it a thread of it's own, it seems to fit far better as an added piece to this one. This should show the state of mind of the Taliban. Negotiation? Yeah.... By whose definition??

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States on Thursday welcomed Qatar's decision to take down a sign that cast the Taliban's new office in Doha as a rival Afghan embassy saying the militant group can't represent itself "as an emirate, government or sovereign."

The Taliban held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday in which they hoisted their flag and a banner with the name they used while in power more than a decade ago: "Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."

Their intent and how they see themselves seems very clear, if the repeated comments about Karzai being a puppet deserving of little more than execution weren't a pretty good indicator to start with.

"The United States supports the opening of the Political Office of the Afghan Taliban for this purpose," DiCarlo said. "We have underscored that the office must not be treated as, or represent itself as, an embassy or other office representing the Afghan Taliban as an emirate, government or sovereign."

Source

Apparently our "underscored" opinion didn't mean much to them. It took Qatar forcing the issue as the host Government to their offices to get a name plate and flag changed. Oh... I can see such great things coming from all this.

Originally posted by dollukka
They shouldn´t negotiate with terrorist.. as Quran advices believers that its ok to lie to infidels. 'Holy Lying' known as taqiyya.

I find it kind of odd this would be mentioned.

It says pretty much the same thing in the Talmud.
Sometimes it's just hard to get away from the notion of "the pot calling the kettle black".

Oh yes, this is what Reagan was saying all the time his people were negotiating with Iran for the release of the embassy hostages while he ran for the president's office. No one seems to have noticed this was in violation of the Logan Act. Then or now.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by bekod

 

I say we spike our equipment, destroy anything useful about the bases we've built with our own hands and just vanish like a fart in the wind one night in a massive airlift out. Leave them all scratching their heads the next day as to where all the Americans went ...as we wish them well with their civil war. It was in progress when we arrived and it will continue when we're gone.

I agree with you - unfortunately, leaving the poppy fields to the Taliban would really put a crimp in the "black budget" for CIA drug smuggling - not sure the taxpayers are in a position to take up that much slack!
If memory serves, opium production decreased under the Taliban prior to our putting boots on the ground, and Karzi(?sp) seems to have opened the floodgates.

Vansihing in the night would be the best thing we could do FOR OUR TROOPS and our selves, IMO.

ganjoa

So let me see if i got this right.

We blame them for attacks on US soil.

Then the US arms them to destablize Lybia and Syria

THEN the US wants to hold peace talks with them.

Please someone correct me before my head explodes

reply to post by dollukka


I'm sure there is a Taliban thinking on the same lines :

"We shouldn't negotiate with Americans.... as they lie to their own people"

reply to post by FirstCasualty

We blame them for attacks on US soil.

Then the US arms them to destablize Lybia and Syria

THEN the US wants to hold peace talks with them.

The Taliban (indigenous to Afghanistan) have nothing to do with Libya and Syria.
You sound confused. I guess you've clubbed the ethnically Pashtun (NOT Arabs) with other Muslims from the Arab regions.

RT

Operation Junkyard: US scrapping 'tons' of equipment as Afghan exit looms

This article explains how the US is destroying rather than leaving or selling this equipment worth 7 billion dollars.

These talks with the Taliban have a correlation with Syria.

Syrian rebels are backed by the US and its allies and have publically stated that the rebels will not attend the proposed Geneva peace conventions. Russia has long ago convinced Assad to go, but its the rebels and their coalition who must be represented at the convention.

Not to mention that rebels have sworn an allegiance to Al Qaeda. Which was a 11 year war in Afghan. with the Taliban.

We know that for those years Karzai has been President, the CIA has delivered bags of cash to his offices without any real receipts. Corruption much?

The irony in Karzai saying he will not go the negotiating table over proposed peace talks between the Taliban and the US is the same in Syria with the rebels not wanting to negotiate a peaceful end to the civil war because that is not what their allies(us uk france Israel) want. Just like the US never wanted peace in Afghan. Just opium because 70 percent of Americans are now on some form of prescription drugs.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by FirstCasualty

 

We blame them for attacks on US soil.

Then the US arms them to destablize Lybia and Syria

THEN the US wants to hold peace talks with them.

The Taliban (indigenous to Afghanistan) have nothing to do with Libya and Syria.
You sound confused. I guess you've clubbed the ethnically Pashtun (NOT Arabs) with other Muslims from the Arab regions.

edit on 20-6-2013 by sk0rpi0n because: (no reason given)

I am confused if Al Qaeda and the taliban are not the same thing.

I distinctly remember Gaddafi in an interview claiming that was Al Qaeda
attacking his people and they were usimg US weapons far more advanced
than his own which were falsely claimed to be stolen from a Lybian strong hold.

If i have Al Qaeda and the taliban confused then i see where i am going
wrong. I honestly thought it was two words discribimg the same terrorist
group that we were fighting. I thought Osama was Al Quada. why did we
go to afghanistan if it was just Taliban and not Al Qaeda as well?

reply to post by FirstCasualty


You are not entirely wrong because you have had the pleasure for so many years to being mind funked. How does it feel? Confusing eh? now try to sort through piles and piles of BS.

You are right they are one in the same thing.

working for the US/UN/NWO, I might add

reply to post by ganjoa

It's funny you should mention Poppys and Opium production. It's not about that T&C related side of it, which shall not be named. That is but the bad side of it. Opium is also one of the single most powerful bases to use for Bio-Fuel and Marines have already been involved on limited experimental pilot projects to produce diesel from using that as the base.

If it were ever about improving lives there, bio-fuel would have been the focus from years ago and Afghanistan would be the world leader in it by now. THAT would have changed lives and national fortunes for that whole population. That never was the point to this though, was it?

Corps tests biofuels in vehicles, generators

Getting Afghan Opium Farmers To Grow Biofuel Crops

Talk about quality opportunities lost. So much wasted there and for nothing in the end.