Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Peace Negotiation Breakthrough in Afghan War

Pakistan President Karzai’s attempts to negotiate with the entire Taliban and the US’s desire to woo low level fighters to change sides combined. The war may soon be over or totally transformed.

Now the top Taliban supporting warlord, and third most powerful Taliban leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar entered peace negotiations with the Karzai’s Afghanistan government. He and Karzai are working in the direction of power sharing. Google, Insurgent Faction Presents Afghan Peace Plan

The Afghan War may be at last finally almost over, or else in the future the Afghan government may be opposed to both civil liberties and al Qaeda with Hekmatyar faction being just one more warlord under the Afghan government control but with the Afghan government pressured to not go along with Western values from within and without, becoming more brutal toward woman’s and civil liberties issues, since Hekmatyar who once threw acid in a non-burkhared woman’s face, has no pretension in the direction of civil liberties.


If this was any other war or any other year it would be top headlines. But many months of hints of secret negotiations and denials by Mullah Omar that peace negotiations were taking place, an angry UN Afghan UN special negotiator Kai Eide quitting than later angrily denouncing the arrest of second in Taliban command Mullah Abdul Baradar, as happening in just the moment that peace negotiations were bearing fruit, hasn’t given much for the US peace movement to get a handle on. However events on the ground are far more important to the future than Dennis Kucinich getting ever so slowly one and two more Congressional Representatives to sign on some future arbitrary date to cut funds for the war.

Bin Laden is confident that he will bankrupt the US, and Obama’s lavishly expensive victory in the thinly populated cocaine farming area of Marjah near the Pakistan border hasn’t lessened bin Laden’s hopes. With a severe US depression, al Qaeda could show off attacking the withdrawing US troops. This is just one possibility for the future. Another is a brutal government in Afghanistan with Hekmatyar as one of it’s leaders, condemning and even helping chase after bin Laden’s henchmen without in any way tolerating secular values.

Hopefully the war is over especially if I or others can get the US peace movement excited. But sadly the pursuit of a more just society over there with Hekmatyar’s help is most likely over as well. However, all of us in the US that don’t want to barter in a dollar-less world better start trying to cheer a peace possibility for our own sake.

There is another possibility that one can do little more than dream of.

General McChrystal efforts to fight very careful of civilian casualties made a real difference in Iraq. In Afghanistan the least violent of Taliban leaders Mullah Omar after urging fellow Taliban and al Qaeda fighters to stop attacking Pakistanis, and other Muslims, won Pakistan’s favor with shelter, becoming the dominant Taliban leader. He kept forming a more and more strict Taliban code of ethics. No more attacking school girls going to school. No more ransoms. When the Central Bank of Afghanistan wasn’t breached, the Taliban, or was it even al Qaeda suicide fighters under Omar’s command, didn’t blow themselves up on the crowded street in front of the bank, but ran to the shopping bazaar complex next door and holed up for hours never blowing anything up. Then there were several attacks where US soldiers were only wounded. Which led the bragging that the Taliban lost their punch instead of praise of their minimum use of force.

Afghan President Karzai begged Saudi Arabia to mediate between him and Mullah Omar but the Saudi’s said, “no!” unless Omar renounced bin Laden which he refuses to do because it could snowball into him fighting with al Qaeda which he, unlike Hekmatyar, he is not willing to do. Anyway if the US would just say it would get out with only the condition that women won’t be forced to wear veils the war could be quickly over. Of course with Hekmatyar’s help the war could also be possibly quickly over with most Taliban fighters condemning, and even agreeing to ban, bin Laden, and the people of Afghanistan living in a totally non-secular state like Hekmatyar envisions. Of course on the other hand, the US not forcing a condemnation of bin Laden, conceivably could mean bin Laden’s henchmen continuing to cause trouble around the world, not necessarily the best outcome either.

Anyway, let’s us Americans whether hawks or doves stop being ostriches when dealing with the world around us.

Let’s not forget that a really harsh depression, in a US currency less world, would kill many more Americans than any sort of non economic terror attack could possibly kill.

Please see or Google,
With Barack Obama Winning Means Losing
Remembering the Past Can Predict and I hope Change the Future
Peace may be a handshake away
RichardKanePA.blogspot.com


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