Raising Funds for the Taliban: The London Conference
Orwell would be so happy to see Newspeak at work.(Actually the official jargon is perhaps too complex for newspeak but incorporates the same emotive factors) There is not to be any negotiation with terrorists or bribing of the Taliban. There is to be a Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund. So that no one can be accused of funding terrorists Taliban leaders must be dutifully removed from lists of terrorists by the UN. So if the whole idea is simply to bribe the Taliban and bring them into the government why spend billions and spill blood of the occupying troops and have a surge? What happened to all those other fine justifications of the surge such as defeating Al Qaeda and providing security in key areas and making sure the bad old Taliban did not get back in power? Well yesterday's truths are in today's trashbins. Now the aim is to put pressure on the Taliban to negotiate. Well yes it is the Taliban that is scared of the occupation not the other way round! The Taliban must think the occupiers are scared and a bit crazy but then they will no doubt order some to take the buyout so that they can work within the government and infiltrate the Afghan armed forces and police and at the same time continue to mount their own armed pressure upon the occupiers. The strategy of having a legitimate legislative wing and an armed wing is often used by insurgents.
- News From Antiwar.com - Is London Conference Becoming a Taliban Fundraiser? Posted By Jason Ditz
Initially organized chiefly to try to lure major military commitments from NATO member nations for the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Thursday's London Conference was eventually redefined as an all-purpose planning session for a massive nation-building effort. But as most of that planning seems to have gone on behind closed doors before the conference, it seems now that the most high profile goal for the conference is fundraising, and more precisely fundraising for a Taliban "buyout." Officials are now saying the total funds raised for Taliban bribes at the conference could easily total $500 million, which would go into something called the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund before being distributed among assorted Taliban members. In the meantime, the United Nations is scrambling to remove the names of senior Taliban leaders from the official list of terrorists, so that they can be bribed without any accusations of "funding terrorists."
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