Taliban role in future of Afghanistan at heart of ongoing talks

Getting in bed with what the US declared war on. Well done, guys. Only took... what? a few hundred thousand lives?

The relationship between the American government and the Taliban was not always sour.

In 1997 a Taliban delegation invited by the Oil Company of California came to Texas to talk about building a new gas pipe line in Afghanistan.

Despite all the horrible crimes the Taliban has committed, and for which the US government are at least partially responsible, there is no other way then to include them in a future Afghan government which would also help stopping their negative influence in neighboring Pakistan.

Taliban leaders might agree to peace terms; but what about their more extreme compatriots? Afghanistan is a nation of tribes, not a nation established on a foundation of law. Religious extremists always consider themselves unbound by legal constraints. The majority of Afghanis need and want civil order so that their enterprises and their children may prosper. Dogmatic fundamentalists disagree and often resort to violence to prove their point.

Once the US leaves, the Taliban will assume control and the worst elements will come out again. Al-Qaida was very much part of the Taliban and it will be again.

America should have learnt the Russian lesson, a war in Afghanistan can't be won

It definitely could if you would put aside the rules of engagement.

Most of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudis, not Afghanis. Wrong country invaded. The best way to protect against foreign terrorists is:

1) to take away their propaganda that America occupies the middle east (we have bases all over there)

2) internal security and intelligence (we already do - and we can even do it constitutionally)

War for oil

It definitely could if you would put aside the rules of engagement.

Which means what exactly? Kill every living thing and rename it Coloradostan? Genocide certainly works, but it's not a place you want to go I hope.

And less armed

This is just plain stupid. Just leave. If the Taliban cause problems again just go back and bomb the crap out of them - then promptly leave again. Nation building is a fools game in the Middle East. Leave the people of Afghanistan to sort out their own problems. American meddling at this point is just an excuse for those who are causing the problems to blame someone else for their failures.

@smithinjapan

Getting in bed with what the US declared war on.

Rather it's getting back in bed with what the USA created.

Kabul, Afghanistan to Washington, DC is about 7,000 miles as the crow flies, plus add a few days to find your way out of the bunker in Kandahar.

Do you think, Mike Waltz, that may be just someone might see them coming on their way to attack the USA?

Oh, I see, a FOX News Channel contributor.

Explains everything.

zichi: The Taliban never attacked America. 

No but they were allies with Bin Laden and still support Islamic extremists like AlQaeda. The Taliban made 9/11 possible.

Of course the Taliban will be part of the government once the Westerners leave. They live there, unlike the Western invaders. Just how many more years do Westerners allow their imperialist governments to waste ressources and lifes on this illigal, multi-natational, open-ended babysitting project?

Trump promised to end this nonsense, I am disappointed that has not done so yet. Of course, there is a whole globalist neolib/neocon swamp holding him back. Drain it already!

The Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden after 9/11 and was willing to sacrifice its control of the country. *

This is a lie and show once again how right wing groups make up their own facts to serve their flawed story lines The fact it that after and even before 9-11 the Taliban offered OBL to the USA asking that he receive a trial

in an international court of law, not the USA. They did this before 9-11 as OBL was a huge problem for them, not supporting him as again is falsely claimed above by non-fact based posters. Cheney refused as he wanted to go to war for various reasons including starting the fake war in Iraq. Now all these years later the USA is negotiating with the Taliban as they have to do so. It is very possible after this is over Trump will call the Taliban freedom fighters and flip the right wing as he has done with NK-with absolutely no results whatsoever. But the republicans like sheep will rebrand the total defeat in Afganistan as a victory for freedom. Or some such nonsense, which they embrace daily in their delusions of all sorts of matters reported by Fox News and the rest.

Read below the facts as reported in an academic journal, not a propaganda source, published by the Oxford Press. Fact based reporting not fantasy based.

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/09/20/newly-disclosed-documents-shed-more-light-on-early-taliban-offers-pakistan-role/

@wolfpack

No but they were allies with Bin Laden and still support Islamic extremists like AlQaeda.

More the other way round.... Bin Ladin was one of the sponsors of the Taliban. But while Al Qaeda is an international project, the Talibans ambitions are local.

The Taliban made 9/11 possible.

I have heard this claim before, but it never made sense to me. If Bin Ladin had not resided in Afghanistan at the time, he would have been somewhere else and done the same writing / teaching / planning. Mind you that when he was found, he was in Pakistan. (Next to a Pakistan armee base, too.) And in case it is necessary to remind you: None of the 9/11 martyrs were Afghanis.

zichi:

America should have learnt the Russian lesson, a war in Afghanistan can't be won.

It can´t be won, if you believe in Western style democracy building and our naive ideas of freedom of religion. To remind you, the Soviet Union had the Mujaheddin on the run and Afghanistan well on they way to a secular society, with equal rights for women and no Sharia, until Reagan made the criminal decision to supply them with Stinger rockets. (Of course, that was the cold war, and all decisions had that in mind)

This is a lie and show once again how right wing groups make up their own facts to serve their flawed story lines The fact it that after and even before 9-11 the Taliban offered OBL to the USA asking that he receive a trial

So in other words from your own source the Taliban knew Bin Laden was going to attack the USA before 9/11 but still refused to hand him over.

According to the BBC, the Taliban later even warned the U.S. that bin Laden was going to launch an attack on American soil. Former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil said his warnings, issued because of concerns that the U.S. would react by waging war against Afghanistan, had been ignored.

I don't have any answers, just observations.

The Taliban are homicidal religious extremists, but they have never attacked Westerners outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan, and, while the Taliban allowed Al Qaeda to set up a base in Afghanistan, they did not know about the attacks of 9/11, and did not partake in them.

A large segment of the population over there appears to support the Taliban, but a large segment of the population does not support them, and would attempt to flee the country as refugees if the Taliban came back into power over the whole country.

Perhaps it would be possible to divide the country into spheres of influence, so that those who are not aligned with the Taliban could live in peace away from their influence, and those who subscribe to their religious extremism could practice extremist sharia law to their hearts' content.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/11/george-w-bush-s-white-house-ignored-these-extremely-dramatic-pre-9-11-warnings-george-tenet-and-cofer-black-reveal.html

Noliving, the Bush adminstration was warned not just by the Taliban but by the outgoing Clinton administration and the FBI repeatedly about an OBL attack, even stating that planes would be involved. This was all well before 9-11-01. The Bush people did nothing, why, they only cared about starting a war with Iraq for the oil there. So 9-11 did happen due to complete failure by the Bush people leading to two wars and hundreds of thousands dead. The ME is still screwed up due to the Bush failed wars.

The Taliban of 2002 rejected the US’s request to hand over Osama bin laden. The Taliban wanted to see proof of his alleged crime, the US never gave it. But for some mysterious reason, the US attacked and killed saddam hussien.

Nope No conspiracy here. The MSM drones will believe what the MSM says.

Noliving, the Bush adminstration was warned not just by the Taliban but by the outgoing Clinton administration and the FBI repeatedly about an OBL attack, even stating that planes would be involved. This was all well before 9-11-01. The Bush people did nothing, why, they only cared about starting a war with Iraq for the oil there. So 9-11 did happen due to complete failure by the Bush people leading to two wars and hundreds of thousands dead. The ME is still screwed up due to the Bush failed wars.

So what? How does any of that justify the Taliban not handing over Bin Laden? They knew themselves he was planning on attacking the USA. That alone should have been enough to arrest him and AQ before 9/11 and hold him and try him in their own courts for violating their own laws if they weren't comfortable with USA court system before 9/11.

@Wolfpack

No but they were allies with Bin Laden and still support Islamic extremists like AlQaeda.

So was and did the USA.

Wolfpack:

The Taliban made 9/11 possible.

That is what the deep state warmongers and the fake media tell us. In the reality, there is no logic behind that claim. Plenty of islamist terrorist acts were and are hatched outside of the Taliban territory. Stop believen CNN et al.

zucronium:

The Bush people did nothing, why, they only cared about starting a war with Iraq for the oil there

That is an incredible hamfisted description of the Iraq war. In reality, the military action was a result of a multi-decade string of events involving Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi (most important), Turkey, and more.

But I suppose in the modern world small attention spans everything needs to be dumbed down to CNN soundbyte level.

That is an incredible hamfisted description of the Iraq war. In reality, the military action was a result of a multi-decade string of events involving Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi (most important), Turkey, and more.

No, it was because little Bush wanted to finish the job big Bush never finished, so he took faulty intel, told the world it was confirmed, and invaded a sovereign, and this is the important part, compliant, nation based on a lie.

Let's not try to re-write history to pretend that your team's war was somehow justified in Iraq. It wasn't. They were complying with the weapons inspectors, and Bush said "but we can't find the WMDs, so they're lying". Except now we know, they weren't.