Is Afghanistan a Lost Cause

We are there and we are committed” was the regular retort of Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the war in Vietnam.

Whatever you may think of our decision to go in, Rusk was saying, if we walk away, the United States loses the first war in its history, with all that means for Southeast Asia and America’s position in the world.

We face a similar moment of decision.

Wednesday, a truck bomb exploded near the diplomatic quarter of Kabul, killing 90 and wounding 460. So terrible was the atrocity that the Taliban denied complicity. It is believed to have been the work of the Haqqani network.

This “horrific and shameful attack demonstrates these terrorists’ compete disregard for human life and their nihilistic opposition to the dream of a peaceful future for Afghanistan,” said Hugo Llordens, a U.S. diplomat in Kabul.

The message the truck bombers sent to the Afghan people? Not even in the heart of this capital can your government keep civilian workers and its own employees safe.

Message to America: After investing hundreds of billions and 2,000 U.S. lives in the 15 years since 9/11, we are further from victory than we have ever been.

President Obama, believing Afghanistan was the right war, and Iraq the wrong war, ramped up the U.S. presence in 2011 to 100,000 troops. His plan: Cripple the Taliban, train the Afghan army and security forces, stabilize the government, and withdraw American forces by the end of his second term.

Obama fell short, leaving President Trump with 8,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and Kabul’s control more tenuous than ever. The Taliban hold more territory and are active in more provinces than they have been since being driven from power in 2001. And Afghan forces are suffering casualties at the highest rate of the war.

Stated starkly, the war in Afghanistan is slowly being lost.

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Indeed, Trump has inherited what seems to be an unwinnable war, if he is not prepared to send a new U.S. army to block the Taliban from taking power. And it is hard to believe that the American people would approve of any large reintroduction of U.S. forces.

The U.S. commander there, Gen. John Nicholson, has requested at least 3,000 more U.S. troops to train the Afghan army and stabilize the country while seeking a negotiated end to the war.

Trump’s conundrum: 3,000 or 5,000 more U.S. troops can at best help the Afghan security forces sustain the present stalemate.

But if we could not defeat the Taliban with 100,000 U.S. troops in country in 2011, we are not going to defeat a stronger Taliban with a U.S. force one-seventh of that size. And if a guerrilla army does not lose, it wins.

Yet it is hard to see how Trump can refuse to send more troops. If he says we have invested enough blood and treasure, the handwriting will be on the wall. Reports that both Russia and Iran are already talking to the Taliban suggest that they see a Taliban takeover as inevitable.

http://buchanan.org/blog/afghanistan-lost-cause-127140

Will Taliban be accepted as a pragmatic alternative to ISIS

Once again, it seems that efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table and end the dispute between them and the Western-backed government in Kabul will come to nothing. We may think that this is regrettable, but from their point of view, this is the most reasonable course of action.

At the moment, the Taliban are in the ascendency in Afghanistan. They have survived the onslaught of 10 years of fighting the United States and their allies, and have since re-established themselves as the most credible military force on the ground. Without its Western backers, the Kabul government can hold its own in some areas, but it cannot hope to establish dominance over most of the country.

It can hold Kabul and neighbouring areas, and be safe in that stronghold, but not much more. The Taliban are in a position of relative strength. And if their goal is to re-establish the pre-invasion Islamist regime, they do not stand to gain very much from any negotiations.

This situation is developing against two very important background factors. The first is the rise of ISIS in Afghanistan. And ISIS is a target of opportunity for the Taliban. On the one hand, ISIS is largely a foreign fighting force – Afghan Islamists are much more likely to favour the Taliban. And on the other, Kabul’s Western backers are much more terrified of ISIS than they are of the Taliban.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2016/03/07/Will-Taliban-be-accepted-as-a-pragmatic-alternative-to-ISIS-.html

Peace talks with Taliban would resume within weeks: Afghan official

Afghan officials voiced optimism on Sunday that peace talks with the Taliban would resume “within weeks” even after the insurgents rebuffed calls for dialogue, with analysts dismissing their seemingly tough stance as a bargaining ploy.

Talks brokered by a four-country group were expected to start early this month, but the Taliban stressed on Saturday longstanding preconditions for dialogue including the departure of foreign troops from Afghanistan.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday he was “hopeful” about peace talks aimed at ending the Taliban’s 14-year insurgency, imploring the militant group to join the negotiating table.

“I say to the Taliban that you face a big historic test — either you stand with your countrymen or with the opposition,” Mr Ghani said in an address to the Afghan parliament. “Peace is the only way forward.”

A presidential palace official insisted that the peace process would resume. “The process may be delayed but the Taliban will show up for talks — this we are sure of,” the official said.

An official from the High Peace Council, the government body responsible for negotiating with the militants, said the Taliban were “within the sphere of influence” of the four-nation group.

http://paktribune.com/news/Peace-talks-with-Taliban-would-resume-within-weeks-Afghan-officials-275882.html

Afghan Taliban Refuse Peace Talks With Government

The Taliban said Saturday they will not participate in a peace process with the Afghan government until foreign forces stop attacking their positions and leave the country.

A statement emailed to The Associated Press by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the insurgents “reject” peace talks and that reports of their participation were “rumors.”

Face-to-face talks were expected to take place in Pakistan in early March, but Afghan officials said in recent days that they have been postponed for at least a week. Senior government officials had characterized the meeting as the first real step in a peace process aimed at ending the war, now in its 15th year.

Javid Faisal, a spokesman for Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, said the government “has no problem holding the first round of direct peace talks.”

The Taliban have meanwhile accused the United States of boosting troop numbers and carrying out airstrikes and night raids on residential compounds. They also accuse Afghan forces of stepping up operations.

Mujahid said the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, had not given any order to take part in talks and that the “leadership council of the Islamic Emirate” had not discussed the matter.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/afghan-taliban-participate-talks-37420479

Taliban reject invite to Afghanistan peace talks

The Taliban are invited to the negotiating table, but they aren’t coming.

The Islamist militant group made that clear Saturday, refuting reports that it would send representatives to upcoming talks involving the Afghan government, Pakistan, the United States and China in the Pakistani city of Islamabad.

“We reject all such rumors and unequivocally state that the esteemed leader of the Islamic Emirate has not authorized anyone to participate in this meeting, and neither has the Leadership Council of Islamic Emirate decided to partake in it,” the Taliban said, using another name for itself.

The announcement appears to be a significant blow to the peace talks and is a reversal from what the Taliban reportedly have done in the past.

Taliban representatives met with their Afghan government counterparts, as well as with U.S. and Chinese officials, last summer in Pakistan, officials said.

But just weeks later, the Taliban’s reported new leader (Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour) deniedin an audio message that his Sunni Islamist group was trying to work toward peace with Afghanistan’s government.

Such pronouncements haven’t stopped other parties from talking, or from trying to include the Taliban.

After conversations in Kabul on February 23, the Afghan government sent out a news release noting President Ashraf Ghani’s “strong commitment … for peace and reconciliation with Taliban groups and Hezbi Islami Hekmatyar,” the latter being another nationalist militant group.

Characterizing it as a “national priority,” Ghani called “on the Taliban and other groups to join early direct talks with the government of Afghanistan.”

And the Afghanistan, Pakistani, Chinese and U.S. governments together “invite(d) all Taliban and other groups to participate … in the first round of direct peace talks” slated for early March in Islamabad, Pakistan.

 http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/05/asia/afghanistan-taliban-violence-talks/

Taliban Militants Cast Doubt on Peace Talks With Afghan Government

Afghanistan’s Taliban militants are casting further doubt on prospects for peace talks with the Kabul government.

In a Pashto language statement given Saturday to VOA, the Taliban said their leadership had not yet decided to engage in talks with Kabul. They said they believed talks could not be productive until all foreign forces had left Afghanistan, sanctions on insurgent leaders had been removed and Taliban prisoners had been freed.

The statement said U.S. night raids in Afghanistan were continuing. It added that fresh American forces had been deployed to the battlefield and that Afghan forces had also intensified their operations. The Taliban said that in the light of those developments, peace talks would be meaningless.

http://www.voanews.com/content/taliban-casts-doubt-on-peace-talks/3220977.html

Taliban conflict: Militants refuse fresh Afghan peace talks

Direct talks were expected to begin in Pakistan next week between the Taliban and Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US.

The Taliban have been waging an insurgency against the Afghan government since being ousted in 2001.

Talks between the two have been on hold since last year.

The Quadrilateral Coordination Group, made up of representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US, had insisted in February that talks would take place in early March.

But in a statement released on Saturday, the group rejected those reports.

“We reject all such rumours and unequivocally state that the leader of Islamic Emirate has not authorised anyone to participate in this meeting,” the group said in a statement.

“(Islamic Emirate) once again reiterates that unless the occupation of Afghanistan is ended, black lists eliminated and innocent prisoners freed, such futile misleading negotiations will not bear any result”, the statement added.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35736434

Afghan Leaders Urge Taliban To End War

afghanistan’s leaders have urged the Taliban to end its 15-year insurgency and negotiate an end to the war.

President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah both made the calls during an event in Kabul on February 15 commemorating the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Afghanistan in 1989.

“Any opposition group that seeks to live in brotherhood with us is welcome,” Ghani said.

“The day when the sun of stability and peace will rise over Afghanistan and the country will be free from dependency on others is no longer far away, God willing.”

“If you have any wish, idea or opinion, the best thing to do is to come to the table for negotiations,” Abdullah said.

Several rounds of talks were held recently in Kabul and Islamabad to determine a road map to peace.

The talks have involved representatives from the United States, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, but did not include the Taliban.

http://www.rferl.org/content/afghanistan-leaders-uge-taliban-end-war/27553680.html

Isis and the Taliban are brutally carving up modern Afghanistan

It is laced with fearful eyewitness descriptions of brutality. Isis features in its 87 pages with its usual depravity (in Afghanistan, of course, not in Iraq or Syria) and the report’s statistics show clearly that, last year, there were more civilians killed or wounded in the country than in any year since 2009.

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In 2015 alone, 3,545 civilians were killed and 7,457 injured. Since 2009, the total civilian dead – not soldiers, militiamen or Taliban – comes to 21,323 dead.

And this, remember, is the graveyard of empires into which we blithely trod after 9/11 on the basis that we would not “forget” Afghanistan again. We would see it through to the end. The Taliban, in the words of a Canadian commander, were “scumbags”. Our soldiers would not die in vain. And it has come to this.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is a very professional institution. It has rigourously examined eyewitness testament and its just-published report contains harrowing quotations from victims of the country’s war. In total, 62 per cent of civilian deaths and injuries were caused by “anti-government elements” and 17 per cent by “pro-government forces” – 14 per cent of these by the US-trained Afghan “national security forces”. But for reality, take this quotation from the father of a man killed by Afghan army shelling in Wardak province:

“It was around 8am, and we had finished breakfast at home when I heard an explosion. When I looked out of the window, I saw a man running towards the mosque. My young son called to me and said that my other son had been close to the mosque earlier… When I arrived, I saw one injured person and many bodies.

“Then I found my son.  He was in the final moments of his life…I could not even touch his body or move him. The explosion killed eight people,,, Can you imagine how difficult it is when your son is lying in his own blood and you are crying for him?”

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/robert-fisk/isis-and-the-taliban-are-brutally-carving-up-modern-afghanistan-34456025.html

Taliban outlast 14 years of U.S. combat in Afghanistan

The U.S. has 9,800 troops in the country, mostly in the east and in and around Bagram airfield north of Kabul, strictly in a train-and-assist role. Afghans take the lead on all combat missions.

The Pentagon report, “Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan,” this month is warning that the “security situation in Afghanistan deteriorated” because of “an increase in effective insurgent attacks and higher ANDSF and Taliban casualties.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/23/taliban-outlast-14-years-of-us-combat-in-afghanist/