U.S. speeds up direct talks with Taliban … The administration has accelerated direct talks with the Taliban, initiated several months ago, that U.S. officials say they hope will enable President Obama to report progress toward a settlement of the Afghanistan war when he announces troop withdrawals in July. – Washington Post
Dominant Social Theme: The US has opened talks with the Taliban because those who populate the Pentagon truly believe that great, sad land has been tortured enough. US policy is all about bringing peace and prosperity to riven lands and Afghanistan deserves the same chance as Vietnam.
Free-Market Analysis: In fact, armies that are winning wars don't negotiate, do they? This fact alone must put a different face on American claims that the Taliban is being defeated in the field by the American and NATO "surge" of forces in various Afghan military hotspots. No, it does seem the US and NATO are losing, and the situation is actually unraveling fairly quickly from what we can tell with the Taliban attacking in force – 400 hundred at a time – in various contested parts of Afghanistan.
This level of aggression alone probably makes it necessary for NATO and the US to pick up the pace of negotiations. According to the Washington Post (see article excerpt above), the pace has increased considerably even in the past few weeks with a US representative attending at least three meetings in Qatar and Germany – one as recent as "eight or nine days ago." The Taliban official attending the meeting is supposedly close to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, which would be an improvement over the British and NATO record in such talks – as negotiations went on for months a while back with an individual who proved to be an imposter.
The US, perhaps because of such incidents, is playing the current talks close to the proverbial vest. According to the Post, State Department spokesman Michael A. Hammer on Monday declined to comment on any meetings the US may be engaged in with the Taliban, stating only that the US had a "broad range of contacts across Afghanistan and the region, at many levels. … We're not going to get into the details of those contacts."
Nonetheless, according to the Post, talks have involved Arab and European governments as well as the US. As we have previously reported, the Taliban is considering opening up a formal office in Qatar. And meanwhile the Obama administration is "getting more sure" that this time the Taliban contact is actually legitimate, someone who has contacts with Omar and Quetta Shura, or the ruling council.
US Administration officials have characterized the contacts as "exploratory," we are informed. They were first reported back in February by the New Yorker magazine and are said to have "advanced" since then. That they may be genuine is indicated by the criticism they've been attracting in Afghanistan itself. Opponents of Afghan president Hamid Karzai are said to be worried that such negotiations may undermine the beginnings of Afghan democracy.
But this doesn't seem to be slowing the mad rush to keep the talks moving forward – to a point where the Taliban can begin to gain an acceptable share of recognized political power in Afghanistan. While the Post article states that such a stance is yet years away, we wonder if it may not come much sooner. From our point of view the US (and NATO's) position is increasingly untenable and this will offer undeniable urgency to these talks.
We've pointed this out in the past. The strategic elements of the war continue to turn against the West. Pakistan itself continues to be a key player in America's hoped for victory in Afghanistan, but even after a decade of fighting Pakistan's leaders will not aggressively attack the Taliban that seeks refuge in its so-called tribal areas. The ability of the Taliban to rest and recruit in Pakistan has turned from an irritant into THE significant factor on which the war turns.
Increasingly, we are beginning to believe that there were two main reasons for the US military industrial complex to create the fiction of bin Laden's apparently phony death (given that he probably died a decade ago of Marfan's syndrome). The first reason was that it gives the US a much-needed victory that allows disengagement from Afghanistan on relatively "honorable" terms. The US can declare a victory and go home.
The second reason is to make a final, last-gasp effort to pressure Pakistan – as brutally as possible – to attack the Taliban. It's probably not going to work, but to watch events unfold is to wonder if there are not plans to either destabilize Pakistan or attack the country directly (perhaps with the connivance of the Pakistan intel organization, the ISI). Either approach would probably prove disastrous for the "coalition of the willing" but then again nothing else has worked especially well either.
Pakistan is apparently led by 25 or so wealthy Punjabi families (perhaps five are the most powerful) and this leadership is fairly long-lived. The Punjabis have occupied their land for several thousand years, just as the Pashtuns have occupied their regions for an equivalent amount of time. The chances of the Punjabis attacking the Pashtuns in force are probably nil.
For one thing, the Pashtuns fight generationally, so if you are a wealthy Punjabi and you authorize an attack on the Pashtun community you are essentially dooming your great grandchildren to a life of intermittent war. This makes everyone in the region most cautious about engaging each other. The Americans apparently have no such compunctions; but, on the other hand, the Americans can go home.
The other reason for not attacking the Pashtuns has to do with their strategic importance to Pakistan. Single-handedly, the Pashtun-Taliban have peeled away the hopes of NATO and the Anglo-American elite for domination in a region where control has been denied them for the past century. The Taliban have therefore given some five Punjabi families enormous leverage with India, the US and NATO.
By fielding what is emerging as a victorious army, Pakistan's great and ancient families have seemingly faced down the world's sole superpower and their old nemesis (India) as well. It's not being reported this way of course. The Western maintream media tends to focus on the unwillingness of Pakistan's leadership to attack the savage Taliban and to portray this reluctance as cowardice born of corruption. In reality, the Punjabis have absolutely no reason to attack their proxies.
The secret conversation of globalist "strategery" may be coming to a close in Afghanistan. The Anglo-American power elites once again seem to have bet that they would be able to pacify and control a region of the world where they have never been especially successful. The City of London and its bankers tried to tried to gain control of Afghanistan 100 years ago and failed. They may have done no better today using American muscle and a NATO coalition of the willing.
The stakes could not have been any higher. Afghanistan, even more than Pakistan, is the lynchpin of global domination. Without the ability to control Afghanistan, elite plans for world control begin to crumble. The concept of unstoppable Anglosphere reach is apparently not to be realized. This has enormous consequences for the ability of the Anglosphere's intergenerational banking families to fully enforce their tax policies, central banking economic system and the imposition of freedom-strangling regulatory democracy.
It is impossible to impose a globalist system when one does not control up to ten percent of the social surface of the planet or more. Additionally, having failed to take control of Afghanistan, the elites are faced with yet another dilemma in that the failure will breed further resistance, and this in turn will further destabilize their internationalist plans. It is ironic that two of the world's oldest tribes, the Punjabis and the Pashtuns – traditional rivals – have apparently faced down the depredations of an equally merciless tribal community with equally ancient roots based in the City of London.
Like Titans of ancient days, these ancient tribal elements have hurled thunderbolts at each other from half a world away with the planet itself as the prize. Even more astonishingly, this analysis continues to be ignored by the mainstream press, and even the alternative 'Net media. The most significant war of our time – and perhaps any time – may pass into the realm of history without a historical narrative appropriate to its importance. Is it ever thus?
