Vincent J. Curtis
30 December 2011
Now that Canada has withdrawn from combat operations in Afghanistan, we can look at the military-political situation in that country dispassionately.
Among its New Year’s resolutions, the Obama Administration hopes to restore ‘momentum’ in the spring to U.S. talks with the Taliban. Talks, which had been going on behind the scenes, fell apart in December due to objections from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, according to an AP report.
Officials from the U.S. State department and White House, headed by Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama respectively, plan to continue a series of meetings with Taliban representatives, provided the alleged representatives, which the U.S. believes to be legitimate, remain willing, according to AP. U.S. officials describe the outreach to the Taliban as ‘sensitive and precarious.’
You have to wonder what’s in the Kool Aid that officials in the State Department and White House are drinking. Hamid Karzai had his own case of vapors, until his head was cleared by a shocking event in September, 2011. It is no wonder that Karzai derailed the secret U.S. – Taliban talks.
That these secret talks were ongoing makes some sense of the otherwise outrageous statement made by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in early December that “The Taliban are not our enemy…Our enemy is al Qaeda.”
The basis for a U.S.-Taliban settlement apparently includes a provision that the Taliban separate themselves from al Qaeda. Biden may have been sending the Taliban an unmistakable signal of U.S. seriousness of intent for settlement.
On September 20th, the respected former president, head of the Afghan Peace Council, and emissary of Hamid Karzai, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was treacherously assassinated by a suicide bomber. According to reports, the assassin claimed that he was a Talib who wished to make peace with the new political regime in Afghanistan, and requested that he surrender to Rabbani personally. Rabbani accepted the man into his chambers unsearched, as a sign of respect. The assassin, who hid the bomb in his turban, apparently bowed to Rabbani, touching his head to Rabbani’s chest, and then detonated the bomb.
Reuters news agency reported immediately afterwards that the Taliban accepted responsibility for the killing. However, on their website, the Taliban contested the Reuters report but refused to discuss the incident further. Mullah Omar knew that assassinating a respected man like Rabbani in such a treacherous way was a blunder.
At best the assassination showed Mullah Omar’s lack of control over the movement; at worst it showed a division between the Taliban proper, and the so-called ‘Haqqani network’. It provided tangible evidence that Taliban protestations of peace were not to be trusted, and left them open to the charge that they were mere agents of the Pakistani ISI, the Interservices Intelligence Agency, who seek to sow confusion and discord in Afghanistan.
Retiring Chairman of the U.S Joint Chiefs of Staff accused the Taliban of being influenced by the ISI in congressional testimony.
The political take on Rabbani’s assassination at the time was that it was ‘a blow to the peace process.’ U.S. Marine General John Allen, Commander of ISAF, released a statement at the time that said that “…Rabbani’s assassination is a sign that the insurgents are afraid: they are afraid of the peace process…Insurgent leaders understand that peace and reintegration is one of the greatest threats they face…”
Right. Now, the Obama Administration appears willing look past this Taliban marker of less than six months ago, ignore the statements of its own most senior military leaders, and by-pass its erstwhile ally, the president of Afghanistan, and seek peace talks with untrustworthy assassins.
For its part, the Obama Administration is taking the war to the Taliban where they live. Hellfire missile strikes from U.S. operated drone aircraft killed ten senior Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in sixty-four attacks in 2011, and twenty in one hundred seventeen attacks in 2010, according to reports from Long War Journal.
Perhaps, like Richard Nixon’s Christmas bombing campaign against Hanoi in December 1972, fierce American attacks will bring the enemy, much to his surprise, to the table, go through the charade of a settlement so that the U.S. can withdraw with its dignity intact, and leave the field open to the enemy.
When it speaks of ‘restoring momentum to the peace talks’ and overcoming ‘blows to the peace process’, the Obama Administration is directing these soothing sentiments to an American audience. It is quite possible that a segment of Obama’s political base actually believes this stuff, as well as addled senior officials of the U.S. State Department.
All would be well advised to heed Rudyard Kipling: his poems “The East is East,” and especially the line from The Naulahka, “an Epitaph drear: A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the east.”
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