Karzai’s offer to the Taliban

ARTFULLY hidden behind a camouflage of some new ‘ifs’, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has again invited Taliban leadership to peace parleys. This time he has promised security if Taliban leader Mullah Omar agreed to enter peace talks even if the United States and other western allies, Karzai’s protectors and promoters, disagreed. “If I say I want protection for Mullah Omar, the international community has two choices - remove me or leave if they disagreed”, he told reporters in Kabul on Sunday. This is not the first time he has offered peace talks to Taliban leaders. Every time the Isaf forces take a heavy toll of civilian casualties as collateral damage from their raids on suspected militants’ positions whenever such an offer surfaces. As usual, the proviso to the offer is that the Taliban leadership should respect the constitution of the country, which by implication means that his position as president should not be challenged. Mullah Omar never responded to these calls but the spokesmen associated with the Taliban would say yes to the offer, but always, predicated talks on withdrawal of foreign troops. Since that was not acceptable to the Afghan president, peace talks never took place. Of course, President Karzai made no promise now, but it is the qualitative change in the environment surrounding the Afghan imbroglio that bodes well and places the Afghan president’s offer in a positive perspective. He has just returned from Washington after meeting King Abdullah, where President Asif Ali Zardari was also present. In September, some Taliban leaders had met Afghan and Pakistani officials at an ‘Iftar’ dinner hosted by the Saudi monarch, kicking off a welter of speculation, suggesting the Kingdom was mediating peace between the warring Afghan parties. Saudi Arabia was one of the three countries - others being UAE and Pakistan - who accorded recognition to the Taliban regime headed by Mullah Omar.
But after the collapse of Taliban regime the Saudis were reluctant to maintain links with it, as they accused the outfit of harbouring al Qaeda. Now that the Taliban is said to be distancing itself from al Qaeda - strengthening the growing impression that al Qaeda has lost its monolithic central command and Osama Bin Laden is no more in control of the entity’s widely dispersed elements, there is the revived international interest in mainstreaming the Taliban. However, the present US administration remains opposed to giving any quarter to Mullah Omar, with Pentagon recently declaring that he cannot be invited to any talks for peace. This position, it appears, is not altogether shared by other coalition partners. Reports have come to light that at the local level Nato commanders do negotiate with Taliban fighters and sometimes reach agreements resulting in evacuation of the wounded and release of prisoners of wars. Now that the Democrats have won the American presidency, there is the widely held belief that despite President-elect Obama’s campaign pledges to beef up US military presence in Afghanistan, his administration would like to revisit President Bush’s Afghan policy. Consequently, the new administration is likely to come under increasing pressure with a thrust on exploring the chances of a political solution to the conflict. To work out how effective such a pressure could be, the noted US foreign affairs expert Eric Margolis’ Friday interview on an American TV channel is highly instructive. Arguing that the Afghan war cannot be won militarily he has urged the upcoming Obama administration to revise its policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama & Guantanamo Bay

THE infamous US prison in Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, had never been a huge campaign issue for Barack Obama, the incoming US president. It was not at least the most important issue of the campaign for the Democratic presidential candidate. There were far more serious issues like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of course the bigger issue of current economic mess at home. Which is why Obama deserves kudos for vowing to close down the prison in Cuba as he had promised in the run up to the presidential election. In his first ever television interview with CBS’s Steve Kroft for 60 Minutes after his landmark election earlier this month, Obama reaffirmed that he remains committed to closure of the prison in Cuba after he takes over from George W Bush on January 20. There is no doubt that few issues have damaged America’s reputation and moral standing around the world as Guantanamo Bay gulag and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have. While the Bush administration responded to the scandal of abuse of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison that shocked and outraged the whole world including the Americans by releasing most prisoners, it hasn’t been the case with the Guantanamo Bay. In the face of pressure from the media, human rights groups, the United Nations and even former presidents like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, the administration has refused to shut down the Bay prison. At one time, President Bush acknowledged the global pressure saying he would like to close the Gitmo but couldn’t. “There are dangerous men out there,” was the lame argument he offered in his defence.
However, as the New York Times and Washington Post, two of the biggest names in the US establishment, concluded after their investigation, most of those “dangerous men” held at the Bay for nearly seven years are innocents who were captured and sold to the Americans for a fistful of dollars by booty hunters in the lawless territory along the Pak-Afghan border and elsewhere. Even if those men are indeed dangerous, as the administration claims, why are they not tried for their crimes in proper US courts under the US law? There are hundreds of prisoners out there and only a couple of them have been tried on terrorism charges by military tribunals. They have even been denied the basic rights prisoners of war are granted under the Geneva Conventions. The president-elect Barack Obama, therefore, deserves the civilised world’s gratitude for taking the initiative to shut the Bay and try the prisoners either in US courts or send them to their home countries. This is the course of action the US Supreme Court had suggested when some human rights lawyers had approached it. Of course, the closure of Gitmo will not bring back the long years those men lost behind the bars. But it might at least, as Obama argues, restore America’s moral stature in the world.

—Khaleej Times