al Qaeda & Taliban in “close contact”
Now I’ve heard Joe “Bite Me” Biden and some members of this forum preach that the Taliban is not the enemy, and that al Qaeda’s numbers have been reduced to joke-worthy numbers thanks to the Bite Me zombie ninja robots strategy. However, the NY Daily News reports that documents discovered at the bin Laden lair show that there has always been close coordination between the two and that they’ve cooperated in planning attacks on the forces arrayed against the in Afghanistan;
The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.
They indicate a “very considerable degree of ideological convergence”, a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.
The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.
One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.
But, hey, the war against terror is over, right? The Taliban are rational actors and worthy of bringing to the negotiating table and given a place in the Karzai government because it wasn’t the Taliban who brought down the World Trade Center towers. Of course, we haven’t heard about these communications between al Qaeda and the Taliban from the Obama Administration, who must’ve seen these same documents sometime in the last year since they were taken from the bin Laden compound, because they have a vested interest in ending the war as soon as they can end it instead of giving the troops what they need to end it victoriously.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
Well, duh! Some folks just take a long time to learn stuff. Maybe why we pay other folks to know what’s really going on?
Too bad it’s not in the military context. They’d be doing our job for us.
This is so going to disappoint CI. He was so certain that the Taliban were just a side show, and all those bullets they were shooting at us were just a misunderstanding.
WOTN – It’s quite sad that you are compelled to distort my position. Had you any intellectual integrity, you wouldn’t have to seek refuge there.
I have no problem shooting Talib goat-humpers in the face, at least as long as they’re trying to kill us.
Just as you have no problem expending the full weight of effort on said goat-humpers….at the expense of eliminating al Qaeda.
Well, yes. The closeness of the Taliban, taliban, and AQ have been known since the mid-1990s, when the Taliban invited AQ to remain in Afghanistan.
Got some real slow learners in DC. Real slow.
” . . . the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – ”
*sarcasm*
And Ho-Ho “Chin Me” Minh —
was just an Agrarian Reformer Nationalist .
” . . . whether they can be PERSUADED to renounce TERRORISM. ”
Men are PAID to write this ??
I need to use that line next time I’m being frisked at the airport (end of May).
“Why me? Haven’t you heard? The War On Terror is over. President Obeyme and VP Bite Me Biden even said so.”
Think that would work?
#3 HA, beat me too it.
The two are intertwined and can’t being seperated. You have to deal with both entities on the border together as one front.
@Cedo – You do to the extent that both entities conduct combined operations. This line of reason, while not unreasonable, has real merit only if al Qaeda’s center of gravity were in AFG.