Internet Anthropologist Think Tank: Why is Karzai grovelling? SMART...

On patrol … Australian troops in Tarin Kowt where they are involved in reconstruction and training.
Photo: Ash Sweeting

October 10, 2007

As Australian forces engage the Taliban with increasing ferocity, the Afghan Government is desperately trying to negotiate with hardliners, writes National Security Editor Tom Allard.

FOR Afghanistan's embattled President, Hamid Karzai, it was the most ignominious of opening gambits. Desperate to start negotiations with the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar and his ally, the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Karzai was promising government posts to the men in exchange for a peace deal that would end the escalating bloodshed in his homeland.

Addressing the two tyrants as "esteemed" gentleman, Karzai pleaded from Kabul: "If I find their address, there is no need for them to come to me; I'll personally go there and get in touch with them."

The extraordinary entreaty was made less than two weeks ago, the latest, and most grovelling, of several overtures to the extremists who harboured al-Qaeda and imposed a repressive, cruel and medievalist regime over the Afghan people.

All the approaches have been quickly dismissed by the Taliban leadership, which cites the withdrawal of foreign forces as a precondition to any negotiations.

"It was a humiliating act for Karzai but he wouldn't have done it without the support of the Bush Administration," says Professor Amin Saikal, director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.

Source:

WHAT ARE THEY UP TO?

WHY negotiate?

:HERE IS WHAT THEY ARE UP TO? A WAY OUT?