HEADLINE - President Barack Obama declares America should be ready to talk to the Taliban
American forces are prepared to make overtures to moderate Taliban commanders using an approach that saw insurgents in Iraq turn against al-Qaeda, President Barack Obama has said.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul Published: 9:36AM GMT 08 Mar 2009
US/Allied troop casualties expected to increase. President Obama conceded that conditions had deteriorated and fighting is expected to be heavier this year
Counter-insurgency not effective. President Obama said the military was not winning the counter insurgency war in Afghanistan as he opened the door for peace negotiations....
Model for talks is what General Patraeus did in Iraq. "If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq."
There can be no military victory. Coalition military commanders have repeatedly stressed the increasingly violent insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be solved by military means.
President Hamid Karzai wants negotiations. Hamid Karzai... has called for peace talks with members of the country's former Taliban regime and offered Mullah Omar, it's fugitive leader, safe passage for negotiations.
Concern that negotiations may not work because there are so many divisions among Afghan fighters. ....Analysts say the insurgency of disparate groups of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, foreign fighters, former jihadi commanders, alienated tribal leaders, drug barons and common bandits could be too fractured for negotiations.
National Afghan government is still unstable.... [Obama is quoted] "The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people.
In the meantime. "And so it's going to be critical for us," Obama is quoted as saying, "to not only, get through these national elections to stabilize the security situation, but we've got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don't have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate."
An ambiguity in the report: Will negotiations be advanced? Will negotiations be fostered whether the national government is stabilized or not? Will the US-led occupation forces be able to effectively combine military, diplomatic, and development actions in a way it hasn't so far.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/4956581/President-Barack-Obama-declares-America-should-be-ready-to-talk-to-the-Taliban.html
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