Mujib Mashal - The Lure of Office Space and Other Ways to Talk to the Taliban

On the vital issues — like the status of the constitution or the presence of foreign troops — [the Taliban] read their position from prepared statements rather than engaging in open discussions. They rejected the constitution because it was drafted “in the shadows of invader B-52 fighting jets.” They also called the Islamic Emirate, their form of government, “a reality on this earth … a system in power in the country” and went on to list their achievements.

[…] [R]epresentatives of the High Peace Council and President Karzai’s advisers were soft in their defense of those basic human rights, out of fear they might offend the Taliban representatives. “With great confidence, the Taliban would call the Afghan government a puppet and the Afghan police and army an enslaved force,” recalls one participant. “There was no one to take ownership for the achievements of the last 10 years.”

It’s a shame that the future of Afghanistan is discussed away from Afghanistan, behind closed doors between a puppet government that is too afraid to even speak up for the people or own up to truth and a group of terrorists that are only engaging in these talks in order to have their ego stroked and get a sense of legitimacy.

You can’t go on and fight a group of terrorists for almost 12 years and then go and provide them with an office and beg them to sit down with you and talk. Not only are you admitting defeat, you are giving legitimacy and official recognition to those that you’ve been fighting for over a decade. I couldn’t care less for the fact that the US lost this war — it was a given — what I care about is that it is the Afghan people who get the shit end of the stick, again, because foreign-sponsored Taliban and foreign-controlled government officials are discussing the future of the nation in a country far, far away behind closed doors. If you truly, truly cared for the Afghan people as much as you claim to in your causus belli, you would involve the Afghan people in this process and listen to their demands instead of settling for some sort of compromise with these maniacs.