USIP, Drug Pusher Georg Soros Join To Promote Taliban

April 2, 2010 (LPAC)—The United States Institute of Peace (funded by the US State Department) and George Soros's Open Society Institute have joined together on a project to bring "reconciliation" to Afghanistan, apparently in the aftermath of the Jan. 28, 2010 conference in London hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This morning, the two organizations co-sponsored a discussion that featured British MI-6 agent Michael Semple, along with two Afghans, Nader Naderi, the head of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, and Farishta Sakhi, long an activist on human rights and womens' rights in Afghanistan.

Semple, along with fellow Brit Mervyn Paterson, as readers of LaRouche publications will recall, was tossed out of Afghanistan in December 2007, by the Karzai government, on suspicion that they were working for Britain's MI-6 intelligence service. Ostensibly, both worked for international organizations, Semple for the EU and Patterson for the UN, but the CIA warned the Afghan government that they had been involved in funding the Taliban, activities that were anathema to the then-Bush Administration.

Semple's British pedigree was fully borne out at this morning's event, where he acted as a virtual spokesman for the Taliban, arguing that they were once victims (prior to 1994 when they first launched their offensive out of Pakistan), too, and therefore, that has to be taken into account in any reconciliation process. "We shouldn't assume that the Taliban are a force determined to trample on all rights," he said. After all, they have "a justice agenda," too, however, distasteful it might be.

Semple's argument didn't go over too well with either Naderi or Sakhi. Naderi told Semple that it is naive to believe that the Taliban can participate in elected government and not still beat women on the street. Sakhi added that all the talk of negotiation with the Taliban is happening because of the failure of the Afghan government and the international community to come up with a successful strategy against them. "Why should the Afghan people have to pay the price for these failures?" she asked.

In their opening remarks, both Naderi and Sakhi expressed serious reservations that the Taliban could actually be reconciled with. The amnesty process in place, so far, has enhanced their impunity (that is, for crimes they have committed in the past), argued Naderi, and reconciliation would institutionalize that. Sakhi said that if there is to be negotiation with the Taliban, the strategy should be to divide them and bring them to the table weak, and that the process has to include groups, such as civil society and womens' rights groups that are currently excluded by the government.

Obama's Opium War

WATCH THIS!

THE IDES OF MARCH WEBCAST DOWNLOAD

http://www.larouchepac.com/webcasts/20100313.html

Afghan heroin helps to nurture roots of terrorist networks, but U.S. refuses to impede production

Stjórnendur vogunarsjóða mala gull