To bring peace to the Afghans, talk to the Taleban

Michael Yon Online Magazine ^ | 20 April 08 | Michael Yon

[LSUfan]

Planes, Trains, Armored Trucks, and Afghanistan

Instead of “planes, trains, and automobiles,” my trip from western Nineveh to Mosul, to Erbil, to Vienna, to Stuttgart, to Atlanta, to El Paso, and then to Florida was much more interesting. It included helicopters, armored pickup trucks, trains, buses, cars and numerous jets. And the “fun” has just begun. After Florida there will be Washington, D.C., and then back to the war. As always, I beg forgiveness for the great difficulty I have responding to emails.

In addition to all the travel there is also the endless homework. A big challenge has been finding reliable sources whether they be military, political, or journalistic. I’ve located another source whom I pay attention to regarding Afghanistan. Former British military officer and ITN reporter, Adam Holloway MP is now on the Defence Select Committee. I’ve mentioned Mr. Holloway in my 2006 dispatches on Afghanistan, after having met him on a remote airfield in Afghanistan. He’s a very smart man with an eye for truth about the war: good, bad and the ugly. In Afghanistan it’s mostly the bad and ugly. Mr. Holloway has written an important piece at www.spectator.co.uk. : To bring peace to the Afghans, talk to the Taleban.

What Mr. Holloway is proposing might cause nervous twitches – perhaps spasms – in America and in the United Kingdom. But I know for a fact that he’s paying close attention to Afghanistan. After I first met him there in 2006, I learned through a source that Mr. Holloway financed his own second secret trip to the hinterlands so that he could avoid the dog and pony show of an official visit. In December 2007, when I visited the U.K., an important part of the trip that I have not previously mentioned was that I met with Mr. Holloway numerous times to discuss Afghanistan.

The United Kingdom is a critical partner in the Afghan war. Mr. Holloway’s controversial article deserves serious consideration and discussion. Furthermore, this Member of Parliament is willing to open a direct line to citizen-voices from the United States, and so with his permission, Mr. Holloway’s email address: hollowaya@parliament.uk

[Anti-Hillary]

Not crack, but rather the by-product of the poppy fields!

[Rikstir]

“The Brits already talked to the Taliban. They negotiated a truce, and we had to go in and rescue them.”

You mean Musa Qala?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Musa_Qala

We had to leave the post because we had too few helicopters to do the heavy lifting and the ones that were flying came under huge amounts of fire hen dropping off supplies. We essentially at the time were doing it by ourselves in the South. So, we extracted our unit from the outpost, using our own para’s. When it came to taking it back we were the dominant force on the ground again, with over 2000 troops taking part. Your screening force to the north, some 600 strong, was a secondary role and kept outside of the town itself.

[UKTory]

“My guess is the british MP thinks that the Taliban can be turned against AQ just as the the saudi’s cousin tribes in western anbar were turned against AQ.

this is not an unreasonable proposition.”

Exactly correct. Nobody else in this thread seems to consider that this is exactly what the US has done in Iraq.

News flash guys, we can’t kill everyone. We don’t have anywhere near enough troops in Afghanistan (about 50% bigger than Iraq) to subdue the country militarily. Afganistan has always been about tribes shifting alliegences. The number of actual hardcore Taliban is relatively small. The way we win is by stripping away factions that have currently allied with them.

[ckilmer]

one difference however, with western anbar is that the saudi cousin tribes like the saudi’s themselves don’t like to marry outsiders. AQ tried to marry their AQ men to Anbar women and got rejected.

Different story in afghanistan/pakistan where AQ has successfully married in.

to successfully strip away allies among the pashtuns — they’re going to have to find out who married who, work around the marriages but also do some targeted killings where one AQ marriage can control a whole clan.