CAIRO — Hoping to turn the tide in the eight-year war, the Barack Obama administration is mulling a package to bring the Taliban into the Afghan political process, including allowing the group to field election candidates and form a political party.
"Insurgencies, like all wars…end when there is an agreement," William Wood, the outgoing US ambassador to Afghanistan, told The Observer on Sunday, March 22.
"There is room for discussion on the formation of political parties [or] running... for elections. That is very different from shooting your way into power."
Washington is also mulling changing the Afghan constitution to pave the way for talks with the Afghan movement.
The package also includes taking senior Taliban leaders off UN blacklists and possible prisoner releases.
Calls for peace talks with the Taliban have been growing as the group mounted attacks against foreign forces and the West-backed Kabul government.
Earlier this month, Obama called for talks with moderate Taliban leaders to help end the Afghan conflict.
The Taliban insist that there would be no talks until foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan.
"They have said 'No start of negotiations without prior departure of foreign forces.' That's not serious. Let's get serious," said Wood.
Afghanistan's Ulema called Friday, March 20, for Saudi-mediated peace talks with the Taliban to restore stability to the violence-wracked Muslim country.
The Taliban, ousted by the US following the 9/11 attacks, have been engaged in protracted guerrilla warfare against foreign forces and the Kabul government for the past eight years.
A recent report by the Senlis Council think-tank said Taliban has permanent presence in more than half of Afghanistan.
New Strategy
The US shift comes as the Obama administration is set to unveil a new strategy to pacify the war-torn Afghanistan.
The new plan envisages the recruitment and training of a larger Afghan army and police force, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"The Afghan national police are an inadequate organization riddled with corruption," US special envoy Richard Holbrooke told senior world politicians and experts at the Brussels Forum conference.
"The police aren't very good right now. We know they are the weak link in the security chain, so we have to figure out a way to increase the size and make them better at the same time."
The plan also envisages stepping up civilian aid efforts and embarking on ambitious diplomacy across the region.
Polls show Obama's current popularity gives him the leverage to increase US involvement in Afghanistan, but reveal that support for the war may be soft and prone to erosion if the new strategy fails.
Sixty-three percent of those questioned last month in a CNN/Opinion Research poll supported sending more troops to Afghanistan.
But only 47 percent supported the war and 51 percent were against.
In a USA Today/Gallup poll this month, 42 percent said it had been a mistake to send US forces to Afghanistan, up from 30 percent a month ago.(islamonline.net)
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