The Taliban collection (2006 onwards)

[Ken White]

The problem with this of course is that any words can be twisted.

True -- but there are those that absolutely revel in all such twisting as opposed to those that merely do it on occasion for temporary advantage...

Actions, in the long run, speak louder than words...

Indeed.

...We can also make it clear in both word and action that while much is negotiable, the fate of those who attack us or shelter those who do is not.

True also. In that, consistency would be advantageous however consistency is not a hallmark of American foreign relations.

While I agree with what you say, there are those who apparently do not. That disagreement percolates and causes the inconsistency and a concomitant reluctance to allow the Intel folks to properly suss out the unkindly intentioned or the various forces and agencies of the US Government to respond rapidly and forcefully. A mixed message is often worse than no message...

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Ken,

It's not honor or pride -- those are understood in the ME if less so here in the west, those folks would understand and accept that but they're smart enough to know that's not the reason -- it's domestic political pressures. Venal, stupid, self and party over national interests...

I think honor and pride have much more to do with determining our decisions than you give these values/emotions credit for. Some, perhaps many, politicians are weasels that don't have a sense of honor or any other traits associated with good character, but at least they're aware that a significant portion of American people still have a sense of honor and they'll play to that. So honor either affects their decision making directly if they have a sense of honor, or indirectly if they play the honor card for votes.

Honor is highly valuable fortifying character and giving one strength to make the right call under extreme adversity. It is also an essential element of our national identity, but admittedly it seems to be eroding with the growing sense of entitlement and pleasure seeking in our populace. Honor and pride also has the negative aspect of reinforcing stupid when we make stupid decisions, because quitting is seen as dishonorable, so we try harder (not change our strategy, just surge more effort into the same strategy), which digs us in even deeper. We create our own quagmires, and while it sounds contrary to our accepted definition of courage, real moral courage now would be admitting what can and can't be done. Somewhere in course of events we cross the line where staying because we're scared to change course due to how it will be perceived is more cowardly than staying on the same course. The Powell doctrine may not be realistic, but we should be able to modify it in a way that allows us to engage in a way where we don't own the problem after the decisive combat operation is accomplished that neutralizes the immediate threat, or at least we don't tie our national honor and pride to a mission that is not an essential U.S. interest. Some fights we have to win, others we don't, but we need to a supporting narrative for those we don't have to win because it isn't our fight to win to make that acceptable to the American people.

Posted by Bob's World

Speed and slope are increasing, as are our narrative rhetoric and reactive actions aimed at the symptoms that challenge the "logic" of our framework of understanding, our self-serving narrative, or our invasive approaches to mitigate the problems

Agreed, but we have time to change our narrative and change our course. The new policy should reflect our strength and wisdom while rejecting the notion we need to use our military and economic might build nations in our image around the world.

[davidbfpo]

Watching Afghanistan I'd noted the suicide bomb attack on Afghan women in Kabul, but failed to read on. This FP Blog article starts with this attack, by HIG or Hezb-i-Islami a militant group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and moves onto the wider context:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._war?page=full

The ever pragmatic Hekmatyar is a weather vane, indicating the trajectory of the conflict in Afghanistan and the ever shifting domestic and regional power game. His role in the Sept. 18 bombing shows that the insurgents have the upper hand, their fight against the United States and Kabul government will continue, and Afghanistan is headed toward a messy, full-scale civil war.

[davidbfpo]

An interesting reflective article by a Reuters correspondent, which pulls together different factors and just about fits here!

A taster:

Yet in a week where the United States has gone through a bout of soul-searching about the Iraq war, history matters. Were the assumptions that led to the Afghan war also wrong from the start?

A new book by Vahid Brown and Don Rassler, “Fountainhead of Jihad, The Haqqani Nexus: 1973 to 2012” adds to that history by focusing on the Afghan group that actually did have the closest ties to al Qaeda – the so-called Haqqani network.

As I wrote here, the book has unearthed primary sources to show that the patriarch of the Haqqani network, Jalaluddin Haqqani, had as much influence on al Qaeda as the Arab fighters had on him – providing them with support and an Afghan safe haven during the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

Link:http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/20...rom-the-start/

[davidbfpo]

I know the Pakistani detention of Taliban and other Afghan militant leaders has appeared before, but cannot recall which thread they are in! Nor doe the names listed below "rings any bells". Somehow I doubt their (ISI) imprisonment has been that rigorous, more like "guests within walls".

Pakistan has announced the release of seven Taliban prisoners in a bid to help the Afghan peace process.....At least one former senior militant was among the men freed "in order to further facilitate the Afghan reconciliation process", said a foreign ministry statement.....The foreign ministry statement named those freed on Saturday as Mansoor Dadullah, Said Wali, Abdul Manan, Karim Agha, Sher Afzal, Gul Muhammad and Muhammad Zai.....Some 26 Taliban detainees have been freed during the past year, it added.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23999752

[davidbfpo]

Wayback in 2012 Posts 15 & 16 refer to a book edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, 'My Life with the Taliban'.

Today they won the Michael Howard prize, awarded by Kings College London:

Alex Strick Van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn have been awarded the Sir Michael Howard Excellence Award, for their book, An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010 (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012). Alex and Felix are both PhD students in the Department based in Kandahar City in Southern Afghanistan, where they are undertaking research on their respective PhD theses. Alex and Felix are at the forefront of developing our understanding of the Taliban movement. They translated and edited Mullah Zaeff’s memoir, published as Abdul Salam Zaeff, My Life in the Taliban (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2010), and currently are developing an archive of Taliban documents which will be placed online for researchers the world over to use.

Link to archive project:http://www.anenemywecreated.com/An_E...d/Welcome.html

Link to Kings announcement:http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/department.../smhaward.aspx

[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.