Men of questionable loyalty in Karzai's Peace Council

Washington Times:

A "peace council" established Tuesday by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to negotiate with the Taliban includes the man who is thought to have invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and another who served as a mentor to the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The High Council for Peace's inclusion of former warlords and ex-Taliban officials is seen by some as antithetical to the body's goal of ending the 9-year-old insurgency. Sixty-eight of the council's 70 members have been announced.

"Many of these men are unlikely peacemakers," said Rachel Reid, an Afghan-based Human Rights Watch analyst. "There are too many names here that Afghans will associate with war crimes, warlordism and corruption."

Those names include Ustad Abdul Rabi Rasul Sayyaf, a former mujahedeen commander who is thought to have invited bin Laden to Afghanistan after the al Qaeda leader was expelled from Sudan in 1996, and Abdul Hakim Mujahid, who served as the Taliban's permanent representative to the United Nations.

In setting up the peace council, Mr. Karzai on Tuesday formalized efforts to reconcile with Taliban leaders and coax less-ideological fighters off the battlefield. His spokesman, Waheed Omar, described the council as the "sole body to take care of peace talks," according to an Associated Press report.

Meanwhile, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said Tuesday that some Taliban members have made "overtures" to NATO forces and the Kabul government about ending their insurgency.

But those overtures seemed rendered moot by a suicide bomb attack that killed a provincial official and five others in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday. Deputy Gov. Khazim Allahyar was killed when one of two vehicles in a convoy carrying him was rammed by a bomber operating a motorized rickshaw laden with explosives.

...
While it could be that Taliban communications are such that they can't control their people once they are in the field, it is also very likely that the Taliban's word is no good and this Peace Council is a fools errand. I tend to think it is the latter. The chances of negotiating anything of value are remote.

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