Majority of Moderate Taliban Uninterested in Peace Talks
“We will continue our jihad until the creation of an Islamic system."
August 1, 2015
Daniel Greenfield
Obama wanted to talk to the moderate Taliban.
Joe Biden claimed that the Taliban are not our enemy. He insisted "There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy".
In 2009 he claimed that "5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money.”
As part of this strategy, thousands of Americans died or were crippled not to defeat the Taliban, but to force them to the negotiating table. American soldiers were forced to operate under narrowly restricted rules of engagement to win "hearts and minds".
And to the surprise of everyone, the majority of moderate Taliban appear unwilling to do the peace dance.
Less than a week ago, Afghanistan seemed to be edging toward peace. Taliban insurgent leaders were preparing to attend a second round of negotiations with Afghan officials, prodded by Pakistani authorities amid a thaw in their long-chilly relations with Kabul and reinforced by a supportive recent statement from the supreme Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar.
Today, that hopeful scenario has been blown sky-high with the seismic revelation that Omar has been dead for the past two years. New peace talks have been abruptly postponed, and the Taliban official named to replace Omar has just vowed to keep its religious war going in a desperate bid to unify the increasingly fractured movement.
Jihad Yesterday, Jihad Today, Jihad Forever.
“We will continue our jihad until the creation of an Islamic system. The enemy with their talk of peace is trying by this propaganda to weaken the jihad,” a voice introduced as Akhtar Mohammad Mansour said in a speech on the Taliban Web site on Saturday. “Where there is disunity, Allah will be unhappy and only the enemies will be happy. We have fought for 25 years and we will not lose our achievements.”
Maybe they just need jobs?
U.S. officials, who until just days ago were optimistic that the peace talks would bear fruit after a 14-year conflict that has cost thousands of U.S. lives and billions of dollars, now say they have no idea which direction the post-Omar Taliban will take or what impact his death will have on the group’s mind-set, cohesion or tenuous appetite for ending the conflict.
You can be confident these guys and girls know what they're doing because... they have no idea. Their whole Afghanistan strategy was premised on getting the Taliban to play. But... what if the Taliban refuse to play nice? What if Iran really wants Death to America? What if everything their ideology says doesn't work in the real world?
Time for more Kool Aid.
“This is a moment of opportunity” for the Taliban to choose war or peace, Washington’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Daniel Feldman, told journalists here Friday. “We hope they will embrace the second option,” he said, but added that U.S. officials could not yet speculate on the outcome. “We are watching and waiting,” Feldman said.
The Taliban are an Islamist movement used by Pakistan to control Afghanistan. US officials have had a few decades to figure that one out. But sure, let's wait for them to choose peace.
Mansour, a former Taliban transportation minister and longtime top aide to Omar, was said to be close to Pakistan, to support the talks and to espouse a moderate and modernizing vision for the Taliban as a political force. His bellicose statements Saturday, however, sharply contradicted that image.
Reality tends to do that.
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