Word: taliban
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...poverty, and what is most needed is to give a stable life to the majority of people living in Afghanistan. That means that guns should be replaced with ploughshares. By doing so, those people will be able to rebuild their lives. And in this situation, al-Qaeda and the Taliban will naturally not be able to thrive...
...come as President Barack Obama’s nascent administration has signalled an intention to increase its focus on the nation. The ambassador outlined a series of steps he hoped the Afghan government could implement with U.S. support, including more troops, fighting narcotics growth, and starting negotiations with the Taliban, the terrorist organization that ran Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion. Jawad also said Afghanistan needed better trained and equipped armed forces to maintain domestic order, though he expressed concerns that funding for military training could end up aiding warlords and narco-traffickers if not carefully targeted. Negotiating with...
...Taliban is predominately based among Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group. Increasing Pashtun power in government would exacerbate ethnic tensions in the capital and in the relatively stable north, where Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara groups that helped Karzai into power are in the majority. Success in Iraq, moreover, was based on the presence of security forces numbering some 600,000 troops and police officers (Iraqi and foreign), whereas in Afghanistan, which is larger both in land mass and population, there are only 160,000 troops. The moderate Sunni insurgents in Iraq could be confident that they would be protected...
...Many ordinary Afghans who loathe the Taliban favor negotiations in the hopes of reversing the deteriorating security situation. "We've had 30 years of war, and fighting has not provided the solution, so now we have to try negotiations," says Ahmedzai, an employee at an international-development agency. But that's an option born of despair. "We hate the Taliban, but we also hate the suicide bombings," says 18-year-old student Hekmatullah Hekmat. "In order to have a peaceful, stable Afghanistan, we must negotiate." But Hekmat adds that if the price of peace is a return to the social...
...many in Kabul who have embraced the freedoms won by the invasion raise a moral argument against making concessions to the Taliban. "Are you going to sacrifice the hard-won freedoms of 29 million people for the sake of a few hundred thousand militants?" asks a Kabul-based businessman who declined to use his name for fear of repercussions. "That just opens up the floodgates to anyone who wants to have a stake in power. All he has to do is just go and be as violent as possible; kill a couple of people, and there will be some sort...