Market bazaar approach to negotiations

[Guest Thaqalain]

"The Afghan government and its international backers have adopted a market bazaar approach to negotiations. Bargains are being cut with any and all comers, regardless of their political relevance or ability to influence outcomes," the ICG said.

 

"U.S. efforts to negotiate with the Taliban to date have failed and risk further destabilizing the country and the region, and as a result we call for the U.N. Secretary General to intervene and appoint a team of negotiators," said Candace Rondeaux, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

 

"The events of the last couple of months ... all point to a major shift in Afghan perceptions of the U.S. role here. It's going to be very difficult for the United States to both facilitate a solution and also be a party to the solution," Rondeaux, the lead author of the report, said.

 

"If anything, it will be the election that is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back in Afghanistan because this is the last term for Karzai constitutionally," Rondeaux said.

 

"There is a sense of political vacuum, it's not clear at all who will replace him and that means the competition becomes much more intense. Unfortunately political competition in Afghanistan is never peaceful, it is almost always violent."

 

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Iran's President has lambasted US policies on Afghanistan as the source of all troubles in the war-torn country, insisting that the US should change its hostile policies towards nations.

“Incorrect policies of NATO forces and above all those of the United States are the main cause of crises in Afghanistan and similar countries,” said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an address to the fifth Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA-V) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Monday.

 

“NATO member states, particularly the US, should change their hostile policies towards nations and avoid humiliating them by respecting them,” he added.

 

The Iranian chief executive added that NATO states are prolonging their presence in the region under the pretext of fight against terrorism, emphasizing that their real goal is to encircle the whole strategic region.

 

President Ahmadinejad stated that the NATO interference has spread insecurity in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the entire region.

 

He called for the swift withdrawal of the US-led NATO forces from Afghanistan and expressed confidence that it would eradicate narcotics and terrorism in the war-torn country.

 

“The world needs a new order based on which rights of nations will be observed,” Ahmadinejad pointed out.

[Guest Thaqalain]

Orwellian approach

 

Interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, author & historian

The problem with the peace plan is that it fails to recognize that the origin of the problem are these foreign death squads, NATO-backed death squads, that have been introduced into the country over the last year or more and of course they have gathered a certain amount of indigenous population, people with various grievances against the regime.”

 

When Hilary Clinton today says that the Syrian army has got to get out of these cities, this is completely one-sided; this is this Orwellian approach((Of, relating to, or evocative of the works of George Orwell, especially the satirical novel 1984, which depicts a futuristic totalitarian state.)) that the West has had to this. It is simply ignoring the fact that there are death squads on the ground and that NATO put them there.

 

[Guest Desert Rat]

You should never have been a safe haven for terrorist. We remember your role in September 11, 2001.