Who do you trust?

At first this sounds pretty tempting, but when you check out the details it isn't quite so attractive.

At the major international conference on Afghanistan in London last Thursday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban to take part in a loya jirga (assembly of elders) - as a start to peace talks.

The Taliban are widely reported as having responded that first they want all of the more than 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan to leave the country by 2011.

Asia Times Online, however, has learned from well-connected sources in Afghanistan who have been directly involved in backchannel negotiations with the Taliban that there is an important nuance to the Taliban demand. That is, the United States must put an immediate halt to its plans to send a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan before withdrawal begins in 2011.

In return, the Taliban would be prepared to open up a channel of dialogue with the Americans, through Saudi Arabia, while at the same time taking measures to reduce the level of hostilities in the country.

[snip]

The key issue boils down to one of trust, that is, whether the US would be prepared to only send in replacements for previously deployed troops, given that the surge in forces was meant to be a cornerstone of its counter-insurgency plan as a means of softening up the Taliban before talks could begin in earnest. Asia Times Online contacts claim that in an effort to get the dialogue process back on track, the US is considering the Taliban's demand on stopping the troop surge in Afghanistan, with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan lined up to work out an arrangement that would keep the Taliban and al-Qaeda under control in any US exit plan.

Should the US agree to the Taliban demands, there is no guarantee that the Taliban would stick to their word. This is the US's dilemma.

"Washington has to focus on out-of-box thinking to resolve this conflict in Afghanistan," a Kabul-based contact told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity. "The Americans desperately want an exit strategy but they cannot announce it outright because if they did so, the Taliban would overrun any government they left behind. The Americans aim to invite the Taliban to join the political process, but the bitter fact is that the Taliban do not believe in elections at all. They want the reinstatement of their Islamic Emirate that was dissolved by the Americans in 2001.

And just why might the Taliban not keep their word? Hell, that would be up to Obama. Its all there in the passages snipped.
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Note: Headline links to source.

Afghan, U.S. reports on firefight differ

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about civilians' being killed in Afghanistan by coalition forces.

An explosives-rigged minivan crashed into a convoy of Marines that U.S. officials said also came under fire from militant gunmen Sunday. As many as 10 people were killed and 34 wounded as the convoy made a frenzied escape, and injured Afghans said the Americans fired on civilian cars and pedestrians as they sped away.

U.S. officials said militant gunfire may have killed or injured civilians, but Afghanistan's Interior Ministry and wounded Afghans said most of the bullets were American. Hundreds of angry Afghans protested near the blast site, denouncing the U.S. presence here.

As the Americans fled, they treated every car and person along the busy, tree-lined highway as a potential attacker, said Mohammad Khan Katawazi, the district chief of Shinwar in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province.

"I saw them turning and firing in this direction, then turning and firing in that direction," Ahmed Najib, a 23-year-old hit by a bullet in his right shoulder, said of the U.S. forces. "I even saw a farmer shot by the Americans."

Lt. Col. David Accetta, the top U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said gunmen may have fired on U.S. forces at multiple points during the escape. He said it was not yet clear how the casualties happened, though he left open the possibility that U.S. forces had shot civilians.

"It's not entirely clear right now if the people killed or wounded by gunfire were killed or wounded by coalition forces gunfire or enemy attackers gunfire," he said.

The accusation that U.S. forces killed or wounded so many Afghans was likely to cause an uproar in a country that has seen an untold number of civilians killed by international forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. A high-level delegation was appointed to investigate.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pleaded repeatedly for Western troops to take care not to harm civilians, and in December wept during a speech lamenting civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces.

"...they treated every car and person...as a potential attacker..."

No shit! What is it about self preservation people don't understand? Of course everyone would be seen as a potential attacker. That's the nature of this conflict. At any time, obviously, an attack could come from anywhere.

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