Obama’s Exit strategy: Negotiating with the Taliban

President Obama for the first time mentioned the term "Exit Strategy" in an interview with Jim Lehrer. He said that there can be an "Exit Strategy" after there was a strategy. That Afghan strategy is in the production factory to be produced before the NATO summit in April. The "new" strategy places a fig leaf on the defeat in Afghanistan and hides the diktak from Beijing on leaving Afghanistan and solving Kashmir. The "new" Afghan policy is a culmination of various reports submitted to the Bush Administration. In order to put an Obama stamp of the "new" policy, the advisers of President Obama have given the region a different name. Bruce Reidel and others think that the new nomenclature will solve the issue.

New rhetoric and new names with a new focus will not resolve AfPak. What will change AfPak is an end to drone bombing in Pakistan, talking to the Taliban and a massive Marshall plan for the region.

The Bush Administration was already talking to the insurgent in Afghanistan. Pakistan has made a deal with the insurgent in Swat. Islamabad is also trying to duplicate that deal in FATA.

Pakistani supporters receive Ghairat Baheer, son-in-law of anti-US Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar upon his arrival from Kabul, Afghanistan at Peshawar airport in Pakistan. Baheer was released from a jail in Kabul. - AP/File photo.

RIYADH: Western officials, the Afghan government and Taliban-linked mediators have been engaged in secret negotiations to bring elements of the group into Afghanistan's political process, the Al Jazeera netwrok is reporting.

The talks are reportedly taking place in Dubai, London and Afghanistan since the beginning of the year and revolve around the return of Gulbaldin Hekmatyar, the former Afghan prime minister, who has been in hiding for seven years, to Afghanistan.

Ghairat Baheer, one of Hektmatyar's two son-in-laws, released from the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan in May last year after six years in custody, is involved in the process, according to reports. Baheer was ambassador to Pakistan in the 1990s. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 while he was a spokesman for the Hizb-e-Islami militant group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Humayun Jarir, a Kabul-based politician and the other son-in-law of Hekmatyar, is also said have been in involved in the talks.

Hekmatyar is the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami forces, a faction of Afghanistan's Hezb-i-Islami party, and is purported to be in the northwest tribal region of Pakistan.

His forces fight alongside the Taliban and are considered to be a terrorist organisation by the United States forces in Afghanistan.

According to information revealed to Al Jazeera, Hekmatyarwould be offered asylum in Saudi Arabia, after which he would be allowed to return to Afghanistan with immunity from prosecution. The British government is backing that element of the deal, Al Jazeera said quoting sources.

James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul is of the opinion that there is a possibility that these talks could be widened further so as to bring in elements of the Taliban.' It is not clear whether the secret negotiations were aimed at separating Hekmatyar's Taliban-linked faction from the group, or whether to encourage some elements of the Taliban to join the political process. Dawn. Western officials, Taliban engaged in secret talks By Syed Rashid Husain. Friday, 27 Feb, 2009 | 10:11 PM PST |