WASHINGTON: The commander of US forces in Afghanistan said in an interview published on Monday that senior Taliban leaders could join a new government in Kabul.
Although US leaders started talking publicly about including the Taliban in a political solution earlier this month, Gen Stanley McChrystal went a step ahead when he spoke of also accepting senior Taliban leaders in a possible new arrangement.
When asked if senior Taliban leaders might eventually become government leaders in Kabul, Gen McChrystal said: “I think that anybody who dedicates themselves to the future and not the past, and anybody whose future is focussed on the right kinds of things for Afghanistan,” might participate in government.
In a related development, the leader of the UN mission in Afghanistan called for the removal of some Taliban leaders from the UN terrorist list as a step towards beginning negotiations.
In an interview to The New York Times, Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative, also implored the American military to meet another Taliban demand -- speed up its review of the roughly 750 detainees in its military prisons in Afghanistan.
Mr Eide said he hoped that the two steps would eventually open the way to face-to-face talks between Afghan officials and Taliban leaders, many of whom are hiding in Pakistan. “The two sides have been at an impasse for years over almost every fundamental issue, including the issue of talking itself,” the NYT noted.
Diplomatic observers in Washington say that Gen McChrystal’s remarks are particularly significant because they come before an international conference on Afghanistan in London on Thursday, which is expected to address a framework for transferring security responsibilities to the Afghans.
In an interview with the Financial Times and also published in a number of US newspapers on Monday, Gen McChrystal said high-level political negotiations with leaders of the Taliban could help bring an end to the conflict.
“I think that (negotiations) is in the purview of the government of Afghanistan to do, but I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it’s the right outcome. I think that the re-integration of fighters can take a lot of the energy out of the current levels of the insurgency. Then I think you open up, the option, the possibility, for everybody to look at what’s the right combination of participation in the government here,” he said.
The Christian Science Monitor observed that Gen McChrystal’s statement “could be aimed toward influencing the conference in London”.
The remarks by the US commander and the UN envoy were the latest in a series of Afghan and Western efforts to engage the Taliban movement with diplomatic and political means.
American, Afghan and Nato leaders are also preparing to start an ambitious programme to persuade rank-and-file Taliban fighters to give up fighting in exchange for schooling and jobs. That plan, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will be the focus of the London conference as well.
The plan aims at the bottom of the Taliban hierarchy — the foot soldiers who are widely perceived as mostly poor, illiterate, and susceptible to promises of money and jobs. In 2007 and 2008, a similar effort unfolded in Iraq, where some 30,000 members of the country’s Sunni sect — many of them former insurgents — were put on the American payroll. “Partly as a result, violence there plummeted,” the NYT noted.
Last week, the American envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan signalled some willingness to allow the names of some Taliban to be taken off the UN list as long as they were not senior commanders responsible for atrocities or associated with Al Qaeda.
“A lot of the names don’t mean much to me,” Richard Holbrooke said in Kabul. “Some of the people on the list are dead, some shouldn’t be on the list and some are among the most dangerous people in the world.
“I would be all in favour of looking at the list on a case-by-case basis to see if there are people on the list who are on the list by mistake and should be removed, or in fact are dead,” he said.
Reuters adds: Gen McChrystal expressed the hope that increased troop levels will weaken the Taliban enough that their leaders will accept a peace deal.
He told the Financial Times on Monday that there had been ‘enough fighting’ and held out the possibility the Taliban could eventually help run the countryLINK
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ISLAMABAD (APP) – President Asif Ali Zardari Thursday night deleted the following four laws from the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution thereby allowing the provinces to make any changes in the local government laws they deemed appropriate to suit their own peculiar needs and circumstances. The laws thus deleted from the Sixth Schedule on the eve of the New Year include (i) The Balochistan Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XVIII of 2001), (ii) The North West Frontier Province Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XIV of 2001) (iii), The Punjab Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XIII of 2001) and (iv) The Sindh Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XXVI of 2001). Spokesperson to the President former Senator Farhatullah Babar said that while signing the Order few hours before the strike of the clock the President described it as the New Year gift to the nation to further advance the process of provincial autonomy and harmony. He said that as the clock strikes tonight heralding the advent of 2010 the provinces would be free to make their own laws relating to the local bodies either through legislation or ordinances. The provinces will also be free to do whatever they liked whether to hold elections to the local bodies on the expiry of their term or appoint administrators instead to run the affairs of local government. Farhatullah Babar said that although the Local Bodies is a provincial subject, the then dictatorship had included it in the sixth schedule of the Constitution thereby barring the provincial governments from making changes in it for six years until 31st December, 2009 without the prior approval of the President. The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution states that the laws included in it cannot be changed until December 31, 2009 without prior and formal approval of the President. Although this was patent interference in the provincial autonomy and against the spirit of the 1973 Constitution and was roundly criticised by the provinces and the people, the dictatorship insisted on usurping the provinces powers to manipulate politics at the grassroots level for pursuing its own political agenda, he said.LINK
KARACHI: A suicide bomber on Monday struck Pakistan’s largest procession of Shia Muslims on the holiest day in their calendar, killing at least 30 people and wounding dozens more, defying a major security clampdown.
The blast unleashed pandemonium at M A Jinnah Road, one of the biggest boulevards in Karachi, where angry mourners threw stones and opened fire into the air, sparking appeals from the authorities for calm.
Tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces had been deployed, fearing sectarian clashes or militant bombings would target the Shia faithful who whip themselves to mourn the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein.
“It was a suicide attack. He was walking with the procession and he blew himself up,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told a private television, appealing on the Shia community to suspend their commemorations.
“This pattern shows that this was a joint venture between Tehreek-i-Taliban and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi,” Malik said, referring to two of Pakistan’s most potent militant networks.
Ambulances raced through the streets, ferrying the casualties to hospitals, where state television said medics declared a state of emergency.
Sindh Minister for Health, Dr Sagheer Ahmed told APP that at least 30 persons were killed while 63 were injured in the blast.
“We have declared emergency at all hospitals in Karachi and doctors are making every effort to save the injured. The situation is very grim,” he said.
It was the second bomb attack to mar Ashura in Pakistan after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a main Shia mosque in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, killing seven people late Sunday.
Fire broke out after the blast in Karachi, fanning thick smoke into the sky, and people were running in all directions, an AFP reporter said.
Two further explosions were heard, which could have been gas tanks exploding in burning vehicles, and mourners torched a bus, which had blocked off a road for the procession, witnesses said.
DawnNews reported that at least 50 shops and two police stations had been set ablaze. Dozens of vehicles, including two police mobiles, were also torched following the attack.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani swiftly condemned the blast and also appealed on the masses to remain peaceful, his office said.
In Karachi, the capital of Sindh, more than 50,000 Shias had poured into the streets to commemorate Muharram.
Sectarian violence periodically flares in Pakistan between Shias and the country’s majority Sunnis.
Security has plummeted over the last two and a half years in Pakistan, where militant attacks have killed more than 2,700 people since July 2007 and Washington has put the country on the frontline of its war on Al-Qaeda.
Shias account for about 20 per cent of Pakistan’s mostly Sunni Muslim population of 167 million. More than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence in Pakistan since the late 1980s.
Small explosives planted in a gutter had ripped through an Ashura procession in Karachi on Sunday wounding 17 people, officials said.LINK
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