When former President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom Oct. 7, 2001, it was after the Taliban refused to hand over Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Taliban’s stubborn ruler Mullah Mohammed Omar denied that Bin Laden was even getting safe haven in Afghanistan, forcing Bush to topple the Taliban government Nov. 14, 2001, driving the Taliban from Kabul back to its stronghold in Kandahar. Sending former U.S. Afghanistan Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad to make peace could not be more ironic, since Bush-43 would never have toppled the Taliban had Omar provided access to Bin Laden. Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda coterie fled Afghanistan over the Khyber Pass to the mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan on Dec. 15, 2001, eluding U.S. Army Rangers. Had Omar cooperated with the U.S., the Taliban would still be the sovereign power in Afghanistan.
While the low intensity war has gone on for 17 years, the Taliban’s content to fight a guerrilla war from the bushes, sniping at Afghan’s military when the time presents. Meeting with Khalilzad for dinner in Kabul won’t change anything unless Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is willing to share power with the ultra-religious Islamic group committing jihad against anyone considered infidels that don’t embrace the Taliban’s Islamic orthodoxy. Khalilzad has no intention of acquiescing to the Taliban’s extreme Islamic rule, something the world watched in disgust while they destroyed ancient Buddhist structures during their tyrannical rule from 1996 to 2001. No U.S. government since Bush-43 could tolerate the injustice, cruelty, and tyranny of the Taliban’s rule. Ghani knows the Taliban would have his head if he lets his guard down for one second.
Watching public beheadings, torture and limb amputations was all anyone needs to know about the Taliban’s strict Sharia law. Fighting 17 years in Afghanistan, no U.S. government can accept such tyranny that would follow granting any power to one of the world’s preeminent terror groups. Spreading to Pakistan, the Taliban has created havoc, including countless deaths and terror attacks, including the high profile attack on Nobel Prize winning Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban Oct. 9, 2012 for advocating as a 15-year-old education for girls. Now 21, Malala speaks for women’s right around the globe, yet took a Taliban bullet in 2012. Khalilzad wants to bring the Taliban to the peace table, knowing their 17-year-old guerrilla war won’t stop until it topples Ghani’s U.S.-backed government. Recent Taliban attacks have killed 14 Afghan soldiers in the Kandahar region.
Kahlilzad knows there’s now way that Ghani can share power with the Taliban, or, for that matter, cede territory in the Kandahar region without threatening the Kabul government. Returning to Taliban rule in Afghanistan would turn back the clock on the billions of dollars and thousands of Afghan and U.S. troop killed in the 17-year-old conflict. Taliban forces were responsible to the death of 48-year-old Ahmad Shah Massoud Sept. 9, 2001, the leader of the Northern Alliance that battled Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989. Massoud would have become the first Afghan president following the Feb. 15, 1999 end to the Soviet Afghan War. Now the Taliban has joined forces with what left of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS], something the U.S. still battles in Iraq and Syria. No U.S. government can make a deal with the Taliban knowing their connections to ISIS and al-Qaeda.
There’s no negotiating with the Taliban, whose past infiltrations in the Afghan army under the first U.S.-backed government after the fall of the Taliban led by Hamid Karzai resulted in numerous U.S. deaths from sabotage. Under Karzai, who ceded considerable autonomy in Kandhar to the Taliban, the Afghan army was routinely infiltrated giving aid-and-comfort to the Taliban, resulting in Afghan and coalition deaths. Khalilzad knows the history, especially when it comes to trying to make deals with the Taliban. If the Taliban could get its hands on Khalilzad, he’d return to the U.S. in a pine box. Connected to al-Qaeda and ISIS, the Taliban is a dangerous terrorist group, hell-bent on wreaking havoic on the U.S. or any Western power that doesn’t accept its extreme version of Islam. U.S. officials know what the Taliban has to offer: Death, destruction and terrorism.
Afgan’s current president Ashraf Ghani knows that he has no choice but to fight the Taliban as long as they seek to resume power in Kabul. Like Massoud in 2001, Ghani could fall prey to Taliban terrorism at any time. Making concessions to avoid more Taliban terrorist attacks only emboldens the Taliban fanatics that seek only to return to power in Kabul. Khalilzad must help Ghani figure out a strategy that offers the Taliban no breathing room unless they surrender their weapons and peacefully submit to the U.S.-backed Afghan government. However more deaths result from the Taliban’s guerrilla war, it’s not time to make concessions to one of the world’s most notorious terror groups. It’s time to let the Taliban know that the Afghan government and coalition will pursue the Taliban until they give up their arms. Making deals with terror groups can only end badly.
