Why are the Americans so desperate to become spokesmen for the Afghan Taliban?
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: In response to President Hamid Karzai’s blunt objections on planned talks between the US and the Afghan Taliban, I was amazed to see the clarifications put forward by the Americans. They first said that the Taliban office in Doha is neither an embassy and nor were the Taliban an independent entity.
Would it not be more appropriate if such clarifications were to come from either the host country or the Taliban themselves? Why are the Americans so desperate to become spokesmen for the Afghan Taliban? Later on, the Taliban flag and a sign that read “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” were removed from the office in Doha.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had said that America would not repeat the mistakes that it made in the past vis-a-vis the Af-Pak region. But where are we heading after 2014? Is it not possible that the Taliban will again come to power — in some measure — in Afghanistan? And if that happens, that they will provide support to their counterparts in Pakistan, the TTP?
Why have the Americans dropped their preconditions for talks with the Taliban? It’s not as if the latter have renounced violence, or severed relations with al Qaeda, or even accepted the Constitution of Afghanistan.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, June 27th, 2013.
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