Barnett Rubin has an article in the New Yorker, about the current situation in Afghanistan. Rubin casts doubt on the idea that the assassination of Akhtar Muhammad Mansur might lead to peace talks.
Obama also expressed the hope that the Taliban would “seize the opportunity” of Mansur’s death “to pursue the only real path for ending this long conflict—joining the Afghan government in a reconciliation process that leads to lasting peace and stability.” So far, the Taliban do not seem to have interpreted the assassination of their leader as an outstretched hand for peace. Like other fighters, including ours, the Taliban respond to blows that fail to destroy them with determination to make their enemy pay the consequences. Research on the “decapitation” of terrorist groups shows that it rarely splits them and often radicalizes them.
An Assassination That Could Bring War or Peace, Barnett Rubin, New Yorker
An obstacle to peace talks has been a dispute over who should talk to who, in what order. Rubin points out that killing Mansur will likely just entrench the Taliban idea that they should talk to the United States, which calls the shots. Also, though, that this may not matter much.
Killing Mansur with a U.S. drone may reinforce the Taliban’s conviction that if they need to talk to anyone, it is to the U.S., while killing Mansur as he was riding down a Pakistan national highway with a Pakistani passport confirms Afghans’ belief that their real problem is with Pakistan. It may not matter at this point, however. The Taliban seem determined to pursue their offensive to test the strength of the Afghan forces, without their former U.S. and NATO partners, in battle. Ghani has ruled out talks this year and told the population to prepare for six more months of war.
Rubin points to a December 2001 New York Times article, when a Taliban surrender of Kandahar had been negotiated, which the United States then scotched.
Afghanistan's Taliban militia said Thursday that it had agreed to surrender its last remaining stronghold, the southern city of Kandahar, to a prominent anti-Taliban commander and would begin giving up its weapons on Friday.
But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld immediately objected to portions of the deal that reportedly would allow the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to remain in Kandahar to "live in dignity" in opposition custody, so long as he renounced terrorism.
Rumsfeld Rejects Plan To Allow Mullah Omar 'To Live in Dignity' : Taliban Fighters Agree to Surrender Kandahar, Brian Knowlton, New York Times
The Pashtun tribal chief Hamid Karzai is referred to there.
Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun tribal chief who was named at Afghan peace talks in Bonn to lead an interim Afghan government, said that Taliban militants would turn over their arms and ammunition to a council of tribal elders and would be allowed safe passage to their homes. That process, he said, should be completed within a few days.
As is the Pashtun commander Gul Agha, who had taken the airport.
Another tribal force, loyal to the Pashtun commander Gul Agha, has been fighting Arab followers of Mr. bin Laden southeast of the city, and it has now taken full control of Kandahar airport, CNN said Thursday.
Fourteen years after U.S. Special Forces and air power had assisted anti-Taliban forces near the Kandahar airport, U.S. Special Forces and air power have assisted anti-Taliban forces near the Kandahar airport.
Their team leader answered an ever-ringing phone, giving his superiors updates on an Afghan commando mission in the mountains just north of Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield.
The Green Berets could see the progress of the mission on a massive screen on the wall — live video sent by an American drone. The Afghan commandos had opened fire on the Taliban, and they had fired back. An American AH-64 Apache attack helicopter sliced down to shred the defenders. Many scattered.
Under U.S. Air Cover, Afghan Commandos Chase The Elusive Taliban, Tom Bowman, NPR
The word “progress” was used there.