Well at least people are starting to think about what happens with Afghanistan when we leave. The bad part it is just a re-visited plan used over 35 years ago.<\/p>\n
How to Leave Afghanistan Without Losing<\/a><\/p>\n I am going to start were it goes wrong.<\/p>\n In conjunction with the disengagement process, the agreement would set in motion U.N.-brokered peace negotiations. The Taliban has long demanded a disengagement timetable as the precondition for peace. Ironically, however, its emotional appeal comes primarily from its role as the standard-bearer of opposition to foreign forces. Thus, when and if the United States does present a timetable, it will be cut down to size. The Taliban will be in a strong bargaining position, but only as the dominant force in the ethnically Pashtun south and east of the country. <\/p>\n The focus of peace negotiations could then be redirected from the terms for power sharing with the Taliban in Kabul <\/strong>to the nature and degree of the power to be ceded to the Taliban in its Pashtun strongholds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yea except for one minor problem, the Taliban does not share power. Feels like a bad pun off of Lord of the Rings. <\/p>\n \nThis approach is likely to get Pakistani blessing as the best deal available under present circumstances. Islamabad’s leading strategist on Afghanistan, former Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammed Khan, suggested such a shift in focus in a Washington meeting on June 17, observing that the Taliban has “important regional influences where they should be accommodated.”He specified Khost and Paktia as examples of provinces where Taliban control might have to be accepted,<\/strong> and he implied that Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan’s Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, had explored such arrangements in their two Kabul meetings in early June. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yea, it gets better.<\/p>\n The provinces under Taliban rule would have a significant stake in stable relations with Kabul as a source of foreign aid for dams, roads, and other economic infrastructure projects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yea like they are doing a great job of that now.<\/p>\n Afghanistan’s neighbors would be more likely to help contain the Taliban under a U.N.-brokered agreement than under wartime conditions in which they want to avoid identification with an unpopular U.S. military presence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course they are because they know the UN is not going to do a thing no mater how may times they break the agreement. <\/p>\n But lets not forget the real danger, out of control Generals<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"