The experts{?} may eventually find a way to negotiate the foreign occupations way out of Afghanistan but they certainly won't be able to negotiate away the extreme rise in the hatreds created by the decade plus long quagmire of that country, especially those by the children who survived and grew up in the carnage of or in Iraq and the rest of that region, leaving it to become that quagmire of insurgent warfare by leaving to invade, destroy and occupy Iraq. Iraq itself is still ongoing after eight years, as the invaders and occupiers, in Afghanistan, didn't fulfill the initial so called goals related to 9/11 attach on the U.S., rid the country of the Taliban, capture bin Laden and others and minimize or destroy the so called al Qaeda and help the Afghans rebuild after decades of War, destruction and Occupation. Afghanistan stopped being about anything related to 9/11 as the first drumbeat of War was pointed at Iraq.
23 March 2011 - Today, the New York-based Century Foundation International Task Force has released its final report on political negotiations in Afghanistan. While on the surface much of it seems relatively anodyne, it goes further than other prominent reports in describing the outlines of a potential settlement, and proposes a high-level peace process led by a neutral party. More importantly, it represents the final result of a yearlong process of extensive consultations in Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. As a result, the report has already generated discussion in diplomatic circles, not least of all because of the speculation as to whether Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN representative in Afghanistan and one of the task force's co-chairs, might be appointed as the international peace envoy whose creation the report advocates.
The task force's second co-chair was another diplomatic heavyweight, Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN. The rest of the task force is a notably international group that includes Franscesc Vendrell, a former EU representative in Afghanistan, Afghanistan expert and author Steve Coll, and members from Turkey, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan and China.
"It's a cross-section of experts and former leaders in the field," said James Dobbins, the U.S. representative to the Bonn conference that set up Afghanistan's current government structure and a task force member. "And the report probably has the most exhaustive set of consultations in terms of countries and officials talked to. I think those are the two elements that makes this somewhat unique."
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If talks do go ahead, much of the initial progress will surely need to be kept secret, and real results could take years to emerge, a lesson from efforts to end the Soviet-Afghan war. According to Cordovez's memoir Out of Afghanistan, by the spring of 1983 Soviet and Pakistani negotiators made substantial progress on a draft settlement in Geneva. Yet a long succession of political and domestic factors and other contingencies-such as the untimely death of Yuri Andropov-as well as the slow maturation of elite and public sentiment on all sides, meant that no agreement was reached until 1988. {continued}
23 March 2011 - For nearly ten years, the U.S. and the international community have been engaged in the struggle to secure a stable peace in Afghanistan. The international task force organized by The Century Foundation, under the leadership of Ambassadors Lakhdar Brahimi and Thomas Pickering, just released their report, Afghanistan: Negotiating Peace. Their findings and recommendations seek to determine what kind of political path might lead to ending the war. A webcast from the related event is available. {continued with download links to report}
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