Obama Administration Reportedly Mulls Transfer Of Taliban Prisoner for Peace Bid

[High_Gravity]

Shitty idea, as soon as these guys are cut loose they will rejoin their comrades in the field.

Obama Administration Reportedly Mulls Transfer Of Taliban Prisoner As Part Of Long-Shot Peace Bid

WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The Obama administration is considering transferring to Afghan custody a senior Taliban official suspected of major human rights abuses as part of a long-shot bid to improve the prospects of a peace deal in Afghanistan, Reuters has learned.

The potential hand-over of Mohammed Fazl, a 'high-risk detainee' held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison since early 2002, has set off alarms on Capitol Hill and among some U.S. intelligence officials.

As a senior commander of the Taliban army, Fazl is alleged to be responsible for the killing of thousands of Afghanistan's minority Shi'ite Muslims between 1998 and 2001.

According to U.S. military documents made public by WikiLeaks, he was also on the scene of a Nov. 2001 prison riot that killed CIA operative Johnny Micheal Spann, the first American who died in combat in the Afghan war. There is no evidence, however, that Fazl played any direct role in Spann's death.

Senior U.S. officials have said their 10-month-long effort to set up substantive negotiations between the weak government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban has reached a make-or-break moment. Reuters reported earlier this month that they are proposing an exchange of "confidence-building measures," including the transfer of five detainees from Guantanamo and the establishment of a Taliban office outside of Afghanistan.

Now Reuters has learned from U.S. government sources the identity of one of the five detainees in question.

The detainees, the officials emphasized, would not be set free, but remain in some sort of further custody. It is unclear precisely what conditions they would be held under.

In response to inquiries by Reuters, a senior administration official said that the release of Fazl and four other Taliban members had been requested by the Afghan government and Taliban representatives as far back as 2005.

The debate surrounding the White House's consideration of high-profile prisoners such as Fazl illustrates the delicate course it must tread both at home and abroad as it seeks to move the nascent peace process ahead.

One U.S. intelligence official said there had been intense bipartisan opposition in Congress to the proposed transfer.

"I can tell you that the hair on the back of my neck went up when they walked in with this a month ago, and there's been very, very strong letters fired off to the administration," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The senior administration official confirmed that the White House has received letters from lawmakers on the issue. "We will not characterize classified Congressional correspondence, but what is clear is the President's order to us to continue to discuss these important matters with Congress," the official said.

Even supporters of a controversial deal with the Taliban - a fundamentalist group that refers to Americans as infidels and which is still killing U.S., NATO and Afghan soldiers on the battlefield - say the odds of striking an accord are slim.

Critics of Obama's peace initiative remain deeply skeptical of the Taliban's willingness to negotiate, given that the West's intent to pull out most troops after 2014 could give insurgents a chance to reclaim lost territory or push the weak Kabul government toward collapse.

The politically charged nature of the initiative was on display this month when the Karzai government angrily recalled its ambassador from Doha and complained Kabul was being cut out of U.S.-led efforts to establish a Taliban office in Qatar.

U.S. officials appear to have smoothed things over with Karzai since then. Karzai's High Peace Council is signaling it would accept a liaison office for the Taliban office in Qatar - but also warning foreign powers that they cannot keep the Afghan government on the margins.

The detainee transfer may be even more politically explosive for the White House. In discussing the proposal, U.S. officials have stressed the move would be a 'national decision' made in consultation with the U.S. Congress.

Obama is expected to soon sign into law a defense authorization bill whose provisions would broaden the military's power over terrorist detainees and require the Pentagon to certify in most cases that certain security conditions will be met before Guantanamo prisoners can be sent home.

The mere idea of such a transfer is already raising hackles on Capitol Hill, where one key senator last week cautioned the administration against negotiating with "terrorists."

Mohammed Fazl Hand-Over? Obama Administration Reportedly Mulls Transfer Of Taliban Prisoner As Part Of Long-Shot Peace Bid

 

[High_Gravity]

Well you heard it straight from the horses mouth, these peace talks will not end the fighting.

Afghanistan Taliban: Peace Talks Will Bring No End To Fighting

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban's political wing is ready to enter peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan, but the insurgents will in the meantime continue their armed struggle, the group said Thursday.

The militant movement's emailed statement suggests that efforts to bring Afghan factions to the table are gathering momentum, but also highlights some of the roadblocks on the way to any settlement – in particular, the Taliban's insistence that the government of President Hamid Karzai is an illegitimate "stooge" of the West.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the militants had been fighting for the past 15 years to establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan "in accordance with the request of its people."

"It is for this purpose and for bringing about peace and stability in Afghanistan that we have increased our political efforts to come to mutual understanding with the world in order to solve the current ongoing situation," Mujahid said in an emailed statement.

"But this understanding does not mean a surrender from jihad and neither is it connected to an acceptance of the constitution of the stooge Kabul administration."

One of the international community's and Afghan government's conditions for reconciliation is that the Taliban must accept the Afghan constitution, meaning they must recognize Karzai's government. Mujahid's outright rejection of this is likely to be a key obstacle in the peace process.

For the past month, rumors have swirled about the possibility of peace talks between the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan and the Taliban in the Gulf nation of Qatar.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to acknowledge U.S. efforts to jump-start a peace process with the hard-line Islamist militants in order to help bring an end to the decade-long war. Washington has been mulling releasing several Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo as a confidence-building measure.

Clinton also indicated progress on the related effort to open a political representative office for the Taliban in Qatar, whose role as would-be host for peace talks gained reluctant approval from President Karzai last month.

But she said that any power-sharing deal would also have to involve insurgents renouncing violence, breaking with al-Qaida and respecting Afghanistan's constitution, including rights guaranteed to women and minorities.

The United States and its coalition allies are preparing to withdraw most of their forces and end their combat role in 2014, when responsibility for security will be in the hands of the greatly expanded Afghan army and police.

But despite a surge of foreign troops into Afghanistan in the past two years, and an overwhelming superiority in both numbers and firepower, the military effort has been unable to defeat the insurgency. Many now fear that a resurgent Taliban will be able to exploit the withdrawal of the 130,000-strong NATO-led force over the next three years by recapturing wide areas of the south and east.

The Obama administration and its allies appear to have gradually embraced talks as the best way to end the war, even if fighting continues beyond the deadline to withdraw foreign combat forces in 2014. Although the U.S. says those talks must be led by the Karzai government, it has made its own contacts with Taliban representatives over the last year.

Unlike those earlier exploratory discussions, any negotiations that might take place in Qatar will likely be aimed at drawing the Taliban movement formally into the political process.

In the latest violence, a suicide car bomber in the southern province of Kandahar rammed into the vehicle of the chief of Panjwayi district, killing the official, his two sons and two bodyguards, provincial spokesman Zalmai Ayubi said.

Afghanistan Taliban: Peace Talks Will Bring No End To Fighting