The Taliban collection (2006 onwards)

[blueblood]

A statement this week from Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan's national security advisor to the BBC saying : "Why should America's enemies unnecessarily become our enemies?" may have further added to this mistrust.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30105416

I find it incredibly surprising that post Abottabad, Americans still end up getting played by Pakistani army and ISI.

[davidbfpo]

Thirty one smaller threads referring to the Taliban have been merged into this thread today. Those left alone appear to deserve to be 'stand alone'.

[davidbfpo]

The author of this article in The International Journal Stability of Security and Development is Michael Semple, once the EU's Irish expert on Afghanistan and the Taliban, now an academic @ Queens, Belfast:http://www.stabilityjournal.org/article/view/sta.eh/246

Abstract:

Reacting to corruption and oppression in the Kandahar of 1994, the Taliban is seen as working with Sunni clerics to foster a shariat movement for advancing economic justice and (corporal) punishment. Before long, the organization began substantially rewarding joiners, arming for jihad, and resisting international forces in Afghanistan. Now, with less foreign resources to fight the Taliban, the Kabul central government has unfinished business with its still-robust challengers. In the face of recent modernization in sectors such as education and media, the author details three plausible scenarios for the Taliban to maintain its core shariat mission. One scenario is for the Taliban to re-secure (through continued force) its initial goal, viz., overall state power to promote and enforce shariat across urban as well as rural areas. Another possibility projects Afghanistan as operating a dualist system of separate zones, one for the Taliban’s ‘liberated territory,’ the other for the rest of Afghanistan as governed by Kabul. Achieving scenario three would be formidable: it posits that Taliban leaders may be persuaded that their armed jihad has run its course and can profitably be disconnected from the Middle East’s broader Islamic conflict. Conceivably, then, through accommodations with a shariat-accepting Kabul government, Taliban might be able to win buy-in for peace from its own military and its own fighting priests with their strong ties to Afghan communities in Pakistan.

I expect many here will wish that by 2024 Afghanistan will be a distant memory and a land of "milk & honey".