Obama ready to work with the Taliban

EnlightenedMonk

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Obama-ready-to-work-with-Taliban/articleshow/4242149.cms

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama declared in an interview that the United States was open to reaching out to moderate elements of the
Taliban in Afghanistan and, possibly, Pakistan, in continuation of its policy with Sunni militias in Iraq. He, however, added that the war in Afghanistan was much more complicated and that the US was not winning so far.

In a conversation on board Air Force One on Friday, Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of the al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. ''There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,'' he said.

Obama had said on the campaign trail last year that the possibility of breaking away some elements of the Taliban should be explored, an idea also considered by some military leaders. But now he has started a review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, intended to find a new strategy, and he signalled that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by General David H Petraeus in Iraq.

''If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaida in Iraq,'' Obama said.

At the same time, he acknowledged that outreach may not yield the same quantum of success. ''The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex,'' he said. ''You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge.''

Asked if the United States was winning in Afghanistan, a war he effectively adopted as his own last month by ordering an additional 17,000 troops sent there, Obama replied flatly, ''No''.

For American military planners, reaching out to some members of the Taliban is fraught with complexities. For one thing, officials would have to figure out which Taliban members might be within the reach of a reconciliation campaign, no easy task in a lawless country with feuding groups of insurgents.

And administration officials have criticized the Pakistani government for its own reconciliation deal with local Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley, where Islamic law has been imposed and radical figures hold sway.

Pakistani officials have sought to reassure administration officials that their deal was not a surrender to the Taliban, but rather an attempt to drive a wedge between hard-core Taliban leaders and local Islamists.

During the interview, Obama also left open the option for American operatives to capture terrorism suspects abroad even without the cooperation of a country where they were found. ''There could be situations and I emphasize 'could be' because we haven't made a determination yet where, let's say that we have a well-known al-Qaida operative that doesn't surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don't have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person,'' he said. ''I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario.''
Saw this in the Times of India Today...

MOD EDIT: Please put the link with the post, no need to have another post for link
 

Atul

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So now the Americans will agree to deal with a gentle SATAN then a Aggressive SATAN..

Sounds good, Seems like America is already sensing a Vietnam here....... :vehicle_plane:
 

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