Karzai Asks Taliban To Help Rule Afghanistan
Mullah Omar, who has said “We are hunting Americans like pigs”
Well, it looks like they’ll have to settle some significant disagreements on the country’s consititution first.
Karzai thinks he can co-opt the Taliban. What he doesn’t understand is that what he is offering is only a creeping surrender. The Taliban believe they have a mandate from God to establish a Sharia caliphate, and have no interest in sharing power with anyone who would support anything less. At best, they will accept a position in Karzai’s government in order to use it to advance their conquest of the country.
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai on Saturday offered to meet with the Taliban leader and give militants a government position only hours after a suicide bomber in army disguise attacked a military bus, killing 30 people—nearly all of them Afghan soldiers.
Strengthening a call for negotiations he has made with increasing frequency in recent weeks, Karzai said he was willing to meet with the reclusive leader Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and factional warlord leader.
“If I find their address, there is no need for them to come to me, I’ll personally go there and get in touch with them,” Karzai said. “Esteemed Mullah, sir, and esteemed Hekmatyar, sir, why are you destroying the country?”
Karzai said he has contacts with Taliban militants through tribal elders but that there are no direct and open government communication channels with the fighters. Omar’s whereabouts are not known, although Karzai has claimed he is in Quetta, Pakistan, a militant hotbed across the border from Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.
“If a group of Taliban or a number of Taliban come to me and say, ‘President, we want a department in this or in that ministry or we want a position as deputy minister … and we don’t want to fight anymore,’ … If there will be a demand and a request like that to me, I will accept it because I want conflicts and fighting to end in Afghanistan,” Karzai said.
“I wish there would be a demand as easy as this. I wish that they would want a position in the government. I will give them a position,” he said.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has said it does not support negotiations with Taliban fighters, labeling them as terrorists, although the U.N. and NATO have said an increasing number of Taliban are interested in laying down their arms. NATO’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Daan Everts, said this month that the alliance would look into the possibility of talks.
Saturday’s explosion—the second deadliest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001—ripped off the roof of the bus and tore out its sides in Kabul, leaving a charred hull of burnt metal. It was reminiscent of the deadliest attack since the U.S.-led invasion, when a bomber boarded a police academy bus at Kabul’s busiest transportation hub in June, killing 35 people.
Police and soldiers climbed trees to retrieve body parts. Nearby businesses also were damaged.
“For 10 or 15 seconds, it was like an atom bomb—fire, smoke and dust everywhere,” said Mohammad Azim, a police officer who witnessed the explosion.
Karzai said 30 people were killed—28 soldiers and two civilians. The Health Ministry said another 30 were wounded. Two women were among the dead, and 11 people whose bodies were ripped apart so badly had yet to be identified.
“It was a terrible tragedy, no doubt an act of extreme cowardice,” Karzai said. “Whoever did this was against people, against humanity, definitely against Islam. A man who calls himself Muslim will not blow up innocent people in the middle of Ramadan,” the Muslim holy month.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed the militant group was responsible for the blast in a text message to The Associated Press. Mujahid said the bomber was a Kabul resident named Azizullah.
The bus had stopped in front of a movie theater to pick up soldiers when a bomber wearing a military uniform tried to board early Saturday, army spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.
“Typically there are people checking the IDs of soldiers who want to board the bus,” Azimi said. “While they were checking the IDs the bomber tried to get on the bus and blew himself up there.”
Karzai earlier this month renewed a call for talks with the Taliban, and a spokesman for the militant group initially said the fighters might be open to negotiations. But spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi later said foreign troops must first leave the country—a demand Karzai said Saturday he would not meet.
(AP)
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Talking about making a deal wuth the Devil. WTF is Karzai thinking about?
I say that we lure Mullah Omar in, snag his ass and slaughter him on national TV.
September 29th, 2007 at 12:11 pmCall me crazy, but doesn’t going back to where we started from feel kinda wrong? And isn’t Mullah Omar partially responsible for 9-11? And now we’re going to sanction him as a leader in Afghanistan.
Defeat by any other name….
September 29th, 2007 at 12:13 pm“If a group of Taliban or a number of Taliban come to me and say, ‘President, we want a department in this or in that ministry or we want a position as deputy minister … and we don’t want to fight anymore,’ … If there will be a demand and a request like that to me, I will accept it because I want conflicts and fighting to end in Afghanistan,” Karzai said.
WTF!?
September 29th, 2007 at 12:13 pmi heard about this earlier, couldnt believe my ears..I always thought Karzai was going to be a very smart leader..how will he balance his pro democracry government with terrorists who only support sharia law? great question but the answer is you cant..And we didnt go in there just to give the Taliban leader a free pass..He had his chance to surrender Bin Laden just a few days after 9/11 but refused. The last thing this guy should hear is a .50 cal round hitting his forehead
September 29th, 2007 at 12:16 pmSadly, for me this raised the whole question of why our guys are dying over there — Silly me, I thought it was so that NO ONE would ever see, or be under the thumb of, the Taliban again.
September 29th, 2007 at 1:05 pmWhere’s Jack Idema when we need him?
September 29th, 2007 at 1:16 pmAre you nuts Karzai? They’ll slaughter you like a stuck pig.
September 29th, 2007 at 2:44 pmquite a few of the members of the afghan goverment are discrete members of the taleban,karzai cannot get rid of them or wants too .i suggest you all research Malalai Joya a female member of parliment who got thrown out for mentioning the ties that a lot of them have and is now in hiding
September 29th, 2007 at 3:11 pmFine. Do what we do with the Iranians in Iraq. Namely, let the Iraqis invite them in then we arrest their asses. Karzai is a simple ass for even bringing this up, but Mullah Omar would look pretty funny in Guantanamo Bay. Funnier looking than he already is, that is.
September 29th, 2007 at 4:13 pmUKatheist:
Ms Joya’s bitch is that the warlords are still in power. I don’t see any links to the Taliban. If she’s looking for a uniquely western solution to Afghanistan’s woes, it ain’t going to happen. We back the tribes, because they are the real power in Afghanistan…not Karzai.
Secondly, the minute we pull out, Ms Joya and all MP’s like her are dead people walking.
She can piss and moan all she wants. She lives in a 7th Century culture. It is what it is. My suggestion to her is to leave Afghanistan and move to the West, if she’s tired of it.
If she wants to change Afghanistan, then she needs to work within whatever Islamic system is in place. That’s what the US does. Like it or not, it isn’t our culture or customs…it is theirs…So the coalition follows their laws and their customs.
Lastly, the only way Karzai will defeat the Taliban is if we invade Pakistan, or Pakistan takes care of their own mess…otherwise this war will go on ad nauseum.
September 29th, 2007 at 6:22 pm“A man who calls himself Muslim will not blow up innocent people in the middle of Ramadan”
Bullshit..Where the hell has he been? Crazy bastards calling themselves “Muslim” have been doing exactly that for fifty years.
Burn the GD opium, salt the fields and redeploy to Iraq through Pakistan.
September 29th, 2007 at 6:30 pm[…] Karzai Asks Taliban To Help Rule AfghanistanKABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai on Saturday offered to meet with the Taliban leader and give militants a government position only hours after a suicide bomber in army disguise attacked a military bus, … […]
October 1st, 2007 at 1:10 pm