Word: talibanize
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Seeking alliances with more moderate Taliban elements against al-Qaeda is not a new idea in the Afghanistan-Pakistan context, but until now it has typically drawn a skeptical response from U.S. officials who regularly cast doubt on the wisdom of Pakistan's pursuing such agreements. So the news last weekend that President Barack Obama was entertaining the same idea, to reverse what he described as a war in Afghanistan that the U.S. was losing, was greeted with some raised eyebrows in the region. However, his suggestion was welcomed by Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, who has been advocating...
...Obama has authorized the deployment of 17,000 U.S. troops to reinforce the NATO mission currently struggling to contain the Taliban's advance. That's only half the number requested by U.S. commanders there; the President is awaiting the completion of a strategy review (the third since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in late 2001) before committing to a new plan. And his comments on Saturday, in an interview with the New York Times, suggest that reconciliation with elements of the Taliban may be a key part of that strategy. For many observers on the ground, however, proposing negotiations and compromises...
...Nobody has defined a negotiation strategy in as much as determining what would constitute a Taliban moderate and what they would be asked to reconcile much less considered, given the balance of power on the ground, what the U.S. and its Afghan allies would have to concede in order to get a deal that would make a difference. The model for Obama's suggestion, of course, is Iraq, where the U.S. managed to pacify Anbar province by recruiting most of the local Sunni sheiks, who had previously been part of the insurgency, to wage a common fight against al-Qaeda...
...only play with crazy people for so long before working with them makes you crazy yourself. That point has been reached with North Korea. Washington has shown a willingness to talk with nations with which it has not always had strong relations, from Russia to potential Taliban members. Wasting time satisfying North Korea’s national Napoleon complex, however, is not worth the new administration’s efforts...
...after Sept. 11, 2001, everything changed. Pakistan, given no choice by the U.S., stopped supporting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which had allowed jihadi training camps to flourish on its soil. On Dec. 13, 2001, a band of Pakistan-based fighters attacked the Indian Parliament. Two weeks later, the U.S. government placed LeT, one of the jihadi groups thought to be behind the attack, on its list of proscribed organizations. The next month, Pakistan's then President, General Pervez Musharraf, bowed to international pressure and declared that no Pakistan-based group would be allowed to commit terrorism in the name...