Word: afghanization
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...Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Afghan and international observers when he reached out to the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, offering him a guarantee of safety if he agrees to peace talks. Omar, who has a $10 million price on his head for his support of al-Qaeda, has not been seen since 2001, when his Taliban regime was toppled by U.S. forces. Omar is thought to be hiding in the ungoverned tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border, though he still appears to be engaged in key leadership decisions regarding the growing militancy in the country. Addressing journalists...
...extremist ideology and alliance with al-Qaeda. Omar, through Taliban spokesmen, has repeatedly asserted that he has no interest in peace talks unless all foreign forces leave the country. Karzai, for his part, asserted in the same speech that any militant seeking reconciliation must be willing to respect the Afghan constitution, the very document that Omar rejects as heresy. "It is ridiculous to think that Mullah Omar would be willing to come to the negotiating table now," scoffs a NATO commander. "This is the man who draped himself in the cloak of the Prophet and declared himself commander...
...shoulder more of the burden, and particularly to lift so-called "caveats" that some countries have in place to limit deployments to relatively safe parts of Afghanistan. Yet he acknowledges that Europeans are very active in institution building, civic reconstruction, economic assistance, advising on tackling corruption, and helping the Afghan and Pakistani governments improve border security - all areas where the E.U. has a lot of experience...
...says Obama's task is more fundamental: redefine the Afghan strategy as part of an overhaul of U.S. global security policy, and one that gives credence to the 'soft power' of persuasion that Europe is more comfortable with. "Europeans need to feel the Afghan strategy can succeed," Asmus says. "And if the political will exists, then they will feel it is a worthwhile risk, and not just an effort to placate the Americans...
...Taliban captured Kabul in 1994, Pakistan was one of only three nations to recognize their government. The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Pakistan's clandestine services, then sent militants hardened in the Soviet war to Indian-administered Kashmir in order to wage a low-level insurgency. They used the Afghan mountains as training grounds and looked the other way when Osama bin Laden made the country a base for his terrorist network. Many Kashmiri militants were trained in his camps as part of the global jihad. As long as there was a sympathetic regime in Afghanistan, Pakistan believed, it could...