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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
CONTACT: The Real News Network Kimberlee Nancekivell - 416 916 5202 |
It's Time to Deal With Taliban
Tariq Amin-Khan: Taliban is now a social-political force and must be approached as such
Pt 2/2
WASHINGTON - November 24 - In the second part of his interview on the Taliban and what the United States should do to help Pakistan, The Real News Network's Senior Editor, Paul Jay, asks Professor Tariq Amin-Khan what he thinks the best way to deal with the Taliban is.
Obama's top adviser on Pakistan, Bruce Riedel, has recently proposed a military plan to combat the Taliban, calling for the United States to make a deal between Pakistan and India over Kashmir so that the Pakistan forces can be freed up and positioned on the border with Afghanistan. Professor Tariq Amin-Khan opposes this plan and says that it will never work on the basis that Pakistan has seen that military action is not the answer, following their unsuccessful attacks on the Taliban when the suicide bombings started, and will not want to engage in further military action in the Northwest frontier provinces. As an alternative to this mass-action approach, Professor Amin-Khan says that both India and Pakistan need to give autonomy to their respective regions of Kashmir and open the borders.
In the remainder of the interview, Professor Amin-Khan gives his input concerning the locals living on the border, insisting that education has to increase and that there must be open debates on Sharia law. He also says that the Taliban are now willing to talk because they "want some kind of a negotiated settlement and a face-saving" and Obama should take advantage of it.
Watch the full story on The Real News Network.
4 Comments so far
Show AllMight is right, hey it's the American way.
James Swanson, Los Altos, CA
www.bushleagueofnations.com [for free download of entire book]
On February 23, 2009, the war in Afghanistan will have lasted twice as long as World War II, which lasted three years, eight months and eight days.
It’s immensely immoral that it would take seven years of failure for the administrations of Bush and Karzai to finally get “in the mood” for talking with the Taliban.
Perhaps the problem has been GOP dogma that instructs that negotiating with “terrorists” is appeasement and a form of treason. Bush and Cheney mouthed variations of this for years, and McCain trotted it out against Obama, which, I believe, helped push Obama to a more hawkish stand during the presidential campaign.
According to GOP talking points, it appears that Karzai and Bush may now be traitors and appeasers (and Obama could be too if he pursued negotiations.)
The degree to which GOP leaders believe this nonsense can be debated, but for years it scored points for them with the warmongering and under-informed segments of their constituency.
In any case, the Bush regime has believed for too long that bombing is the first and best medicine in addressing terrorism or fabricated terrorism, so long as America is doing the bombing.
Diplomacy is the last resort, to be used only if all violent options have been exhausted.
No, it’s not traitorous to negotiate. Rather, at some point isn’t it traitorous to pursue violence in knee-jerk fashion to the exclusion of peaceful alternatives?
Jim Swanson, Los Altos, CA
www.bushleagueofnations.com
The best way to deal with your enemies - is to make friends.
Or kill them, as we learned in World War II.