Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Talking To The Taliban
There are no Taliban distinct from the Pashtun community as a whole. There are ultra-Islamist Pashtun nationalists, and we call them the Taliban. But that is all that they are. They want what they want in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or at any rate in the Pashtun parts of both. But that is all that they want. Objectionable they certainly are. A threat to us they certainly are not. And this way, we save on having to pay anyone off, as we have been forced to do today.
Talks with the Taliban are inevitable. The status of Osama bin Laden and his organization will likely be the sticking point, though, since al-Qaeda is apparently still active somewhere in the Pashtun belt.
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