Taliban To US: "There Is Nothing To Talk About"

Courtesy Of The AsianAge

New York, Nov. 3: Refusing any peace talk with America, a top-ranking Taliban commander has said that his group has waged war against the US-led forces to create an Islamic state in Afghanistan and to bring Shariat law back to the country, a media report said on Monday.

"There is nothing to talk about. This is not a political campaign for policy change or power sharing or Cabinet ministries. We are waging jihad to bring Islamic law back to Afghanistan," Mullah Sabir told Newsweek.

The news magazine said it conducted interview at textile shop on Afghanistan-Pakistan border and identified Mullah Sabir as one of the highest ranking commanders but said that he did not want his full name to be used. The refusal to negotiate comes straight from the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, Mullah Sabir was quoted as saying. "The tone of his rejection has been so strong from the first that no one would dare to raise the subject with him."

But Newsweek says Sabir hasn’t seen Mullah Omar in years, and he doesn’t know of anyone who has. Internet posts released in Mullah Omar’s name on Muslim holy days are the only hint that the one-eyed leader is still alive. All the same, Sabir says he and thousands of other Taliban won’t stop fighting until they’re back in power. Distrust is spreading in the ranks, Newsweek says, adding that off the battlefield, Taliban fighters wonder aloud what has become of Mullah Omar. Some think he may have been put under house arrest or worse by his second in command and brother-in-law Mullah Baradar.

"He may have removed himself, or someone may have removed him," says a former Mullah Omar aide. "For the past two years, no one that I know has any hard evidence of where he is or what he’s doing."

What would Mullah Omar say about mowing down civilians and beheading captives in the name of jihad? the aide asks, describing his former boss as a simple, decent village mullah who was always upset to hear of his men doing bad things.

Everyone seems eager to talk peace in Afghanistan except the only people who can turn the wish into a fact, the magazine comments, pointing out that Taliban’s "brutal insurgent ally" Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has endorsed the idea of negotiations; so has the US defence secretary Robert Gates. —PTI

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah personally hosted an exploratory discussion in holy city Mecca between Afghan and Pakistani officials and former Taliban members during Ramadan, and last week Afghan and Pakistani tribal elders and politicians held a two-day meeting in Islamabad.

But Mullah Omar’s fighters, the magazine says, aren’t about to quit while they’re on a roll. The number of coalition deaths in Afghanistan since May has exceeded US deaths in Iraq for the first time since the invasion of Iraq. The Afghan insurgency, which seemed as good as dead in 2004, has come back strong.

The Americans, it says, aren’t racing to the peace table either, despite Mr Gates’ in-principle support for talks.

Big moves are likely to wait until the next US President takes office, and the consensus in any case is that the situation on the ground isn’t right yet.

"If you go into these talks when you appear to be militarily weak, you’re negotiating a partial surrender," warns Robert Neumann, who was US ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. The hope is that Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the surge strategy in Iraq, will find a way to fix that problem. —PTI