first of all, Gambit......
prove to me that US and talebs were in talks for ''decades'' before the commencement of Op Enduring Freedom campaign......(not even a month after 9/11/01)
Decades? I do not recall saying 'decades', more like one decade of negotiations. But I will clarify myself...
Diplomats Met With Taliban on Bin Laden
Some Contend U.S. Missed Its Chance
By David B.Ottaway and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A01
Over three years and on as many continents, U.S. officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.
Talks continued until just days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said.
Throughout the years, however, State Department officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the U.S. justice system. It also remained murky whether the Taliban envoys, representing at least one division of the fractious Islamic movement, could actually deliver on their promises.
The exchanges lie at the heart of a long and largely untold history of diplomatic efforts between the State Department and Afghanistan's ruling regime that paralleled covert CIA actions to take bin Laden. In the end, both diplomatic and covert efforts proved fruitless.
The article's date is 2001, so if US officials have been in actual contact with the Taliban for three years, we can backtrack to 1997-1998 time frame of when we were finally successful in having direct talks with the Taliban.
In interviews, U.S. participants and sources close to the Taliban discussed the exchanges in detail and debated whether the State Department should have been more flexible in its hard-line stance. Earlier this month, President Bush summarily rejected another Taliban offer to give up bin Laden to a neutral third country. "We know he's guilty. Turn him over," Bush said.
Some Afghan experts argue that throughout the negotiations, the United States never recognized the Taliban need for aabroh, the Pashtu word for "face-saving formula." Officials never found a way to ease the Taliban's fear of embarrassment if it turned over a fellow Muslim to an "infidel" Western power.
"We were not serious about the whole thing, not only this administration but the previous one," said Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California. "We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities."
U.S. officials struggled to communicate with Muslim clerics unfamiliar with modern diplomacy and distrustful of the Western world, and they failed to take advantage of fractures in the Taliban leadership.
"We never heard what they were trying to say," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' "
State Department officials assert that despite hours of talks and proposals that were infuriatingly vague, the Afghan rulers never truly intended to give up bin Laden.
U.S. negotiators started out "very, very patient," one official said. But over the course of many meetings, the envoys "lost all patience with them because they kept saying they would do something and they did exactly nothing."
So what we have here is a conflict of opinions, not of facts. Some experts opined that the US should have been more flexible to Taliban's demands for 'face saving' alternatives. This begs the question of: Why does the Taliban need to save any 'face' to start? If you are certain that the person in question is not guilty, or at least the evidences are weak, of the charges presented, what 'face' is there that require protection? The reality is that the Taliban, or at least Mullah Omar and his top lieutenants, knew exactly what ObL and al-Qaeda were and what they intended to do to US.
The experts' opinions were challenged by US officials who were in direct contact/negotiations with the Taliban. Hours of talks and exchanges of proposals cannot be completely devoid of 'face saving' alternatives for the Taliban. The US may be recaltricant on some issues, but the US State Dept with all its diplomats all over the world dealing with diverse personalities and cultures, including decades with ME countries, are not ignorant of the need to 'save face', especially when 'face' is so prominent in many cultures such as that in Asia.
The meetings took place in Tashkent, Kandahar, Islamabad, Bonn, New York and Washington. There were surprise satellite calls, one of which led to a 40-minute chat between a mid-level State Department bureaucrat and the Taliban's supreme leader, Mohammad Omar. There was a surprise visit to Washington, made by a Taliban envoy bearing a gift carpet for Bush.
The US managed to send to the Taliban, through accepted third party, a satellite phone that was effectively a direct line to the US President, if necessary. Whoever manned the reception line is not the issue, which is that if there were any proposals that State felt borderline acceptable but require Presidential approval, the President would have been alerted.
The diplomatic effort to snare bin Laden began as early as 1996, when officials devised a plan to use back channels to Sudan, one of seven countries on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting states. Under the plan, bin Laden would be arrested in Khartoum and extradited to Saudi Arabia, which would turn him over to the United States.
But the United States could not persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and Sudan instead expelled him to Afghanistan in May 1996 -- a few months before the Taliban seized power in Kabul.
So now we can push the US efforts to negotiate with other countries to capture ObL at least one more year to 1996, which is more likely to be late 1995. This make the US efforts to capture ObL through diplomatic means to at least 6-7 years time span.
The Clinton administration did not begin seriously pressing the Taliban for bin Laden's expulsion until the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured 4,600.
The bombings were "a seminal moment," changing Washington's view of the Taliban, an administration official said. The attacks convinced U.S. policymakers that Omar was no longer simply interested in conquering Afghanistan, but that his protection was allowing bin Laden, a longtime friend, to engage in terrorist ventures abroad.
This would be unacceptable to
ANY government, that to kill 12 of 'our' citizens, the 'our' as in how
ANY government would feel and not just US, this group was willing to kill hundreds and wound thousands of other citizens. For the host countries, it would be equally unacceptable that this group was willing to kill hundreds of 'our' citizens just to kill a few of the citizens of the one country whom this group has a grievance. In other words, the host countries believed ObL and al-Qaeda considered their citizens to be expendables just to kill a few Americans. If possible in their powers,
ANY of these governments would not only demand the perpetrator(s) to be in its possession but to make extraordinary efforts to achieve that goal, not turned the perpetrator(s) to any supposedly 'neutral' third party whose supposedly 'neutrality' and 'fair mindedness' cannot be assured.
U.S. officials launched a two-pronged policy to pressure the Taliban into handing over bin Laden. On the one hand, the United States used the United Nations and the threat of sanctions. On the other, it began a hard-nosed dialogue.
If the UN was involved, then how credible is the charge that the US had the 'knee jerk' reaction typical of 'red necks' in trying to capture ObL?
Within days of the embassy bombings, State Department officer Michael Malinowski began telephoning Taliban officials. On one occasion, Malinowski, lounging on the deck of his Washington home, spoke by telephone with Omar.
"I would say, 'Hey, give up bin Laden,' and they would say, 'No. . . . Show us the evidence,' " Malinowski said. Taliban leaders argued they could not expel a guest, and Malinowski responded, "It is not all right if this visitor goes up to the roof of your house and shoots his gun at his neighbors."
So once again, with each escalation of violence the US and the Taliban ended up in conversation on how to resolve the ObL and al-Qaeda problem. How is this 'knee jerk'?
On Feb. 3, 1999, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth, the Clinton administration's point man for talks with the Taliban, and Michael Sheehan, State Department counterterrorism chief, went to Islamabad to deliver a stern message to the Taliban's deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil: The United States henceforth would hold the Taliban responsible for any terrorist act by bin Laden.
By that time, bin Laden had been indicted for his alleged role in the embassy bombings. The officials reviewed the indictment in detail with the Taliban and offered to provide more evidence if the Taliban sent a delegation to New York. The Taliban did not do so.
Immediately after the U.S. warning, Taliban security forces took bin Laden from his Kandahar compound and spirited him away to a remote site, according to media reports at the time. They also seized his satellite communications and barred him from contact with the media.
Publicly, the Taliban said they no longer knew where he was. Inderfurth now says the United States interpreted such statements "as an effort to evade their responsibility to turn him over."
Others, however, say the cryptic statements should have been interpreted differently. Bearden, for example, believes the Taliban more than once set up bin Laden for capture by the United States and communicated its intent by saying he was lost.
"Every time the Afghans said, 'He's lost again,' they are saying something. They are saying, 'He's no longer under our protection,' " Bearden said. "They thought they were signaling us subtly, and we don't do signals."
If this is true, that the Taliban communicated to US in signals and codes and there were misunderstanding because we do not have access to the secret Taliban-speak decoder ring, it totally debunk the arguments:
- That the Taliban was looking for a 'face saving' measure from US from the initial stages of contact between the two sides.
- That the Taliban was willing to turn ObL over to a supposedly 'neutral' muslim country.
The Taliban effectively shut ObL up, disarmed him, and abandoned him to the US wolves. They were just too cowardly to say it outright.
This is
IF what those 'others' speculated is true in their opinions of the Taliban's actions.
U.N. pressure steadily mounted. In October 1999, a Security Council resolution demanded the Taliban turn over bin Laden to "appropriate authorities" but left open the possibility he could be tried somewhere besides a U.S. court.
In response, the Taliban proposed bringing bin Laden to justice, either in Afghanistan or another Muslim country.
One Taliban proposal suggested bin Laden be turned over to a panel of three Islamic jurists, one each chosen by Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
When the United States rejected that proposal, the Taliban countered that it would settle for only one Islamic jurist on such a panel, a source close to the Taliban leadership said.
Taliban leaders also kept demanding the United States provide more evidence of bin Laden's terrorist activities.
"It became clear that the call for more evidence was more a delaying tactic than a sincere effort to solve the bin Laden issue," Inderfurth said.
Saudi Arabia already made it clear that ObL was not welcome before the embassy bombings. Then came the embassy bombings where hundreds of host countries' citizens were killed just to get to a few Americans, most likely no one in the diplomatic corps of
ANY country believed that the Taliban would be or actually was successful in persuading any muslim country to accept ObL.
Throughout 1999 and 2000, Inderfurth, Sheehan and Thomas R. Pickering, then undersecretary of state, continued meeting in Washington, Islamabad, New York and Bonn to review evidence against bin Laden. They warned of war if there were another terrorist attack.
"We saw a continuing effort to evade, deny and obfuscate," Inderfurth said. "They had no interest in an international panel, really. Their only intention was not to hand bin Laden over."
Phyllis E. Oakley, head of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the late 1990s, said her bureau concluded Omar would never give up bin Laden.
Last March, Rahmatullah Hashimi, a 24-year-old Taliban envoy, arrived in Washington on a surprise visit, meeting with reporters, middle-ranking State Department bureaucrats and private Afghanistan experts. He carried a gift carpet and a letter from Omar, both meant for President Bush.
Hashimi said he had come with a new offer, but U.S. officials now dismiss his visit as just another feint. They say Hashimi simply wanted to know whether the new administration had a fresh idea for breaking the deadlock.
Yet the two sides kept meeting, mostly in Islamabad. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca saw Taliban ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef there in early August, and U.S. embassy officials held secret talks with Taliban security chief Hameed Rasoli. The Taliban invited a U.S. delegation to Kandahar, but the United States refused unless a solution for handing over bin Laden was first reached, a source close to the Taliban said.
In effect, after the embassy bombings: Either the Taliban were stuck with a guest they no longer wanted but cannot get rid of. Or that what the US concluded was correct, that the Taliban did not care what ObL was using Afghanistan for. No matter what, the US warned the Taliban that war would be the next US response. For at least one year in different meetings in different countries, including on Pakistani soil, the US warned the Taliban of that ultimate response that any country can bring in self defense: War. So how can anyone credibly argue that the US military response was 'knee jerk' just because we can swiftly so moved but his country's military cannot? One year of repeated warnings in multiple face-to-face meetings in different hosted countries, including a muslim one, and we are supposed to believe that the Taliban missed all the notes?
Even after Sept. 11, as U.S. aircraft carriers and warplanes rushed toward Afghanistan, the Taliban's mysterious maneuvering continued.
Bearden, the former CIA administrator, picked up his phone in Reston in early October and dialed a satellite number in Kandahar. Hashimi answered, still full of optimism that Saudi clerics and an upcoming conference of Islamic nations would give their blessing to Bush's demand that they "cough him up."
"There was a 50-50 chance something could happen," Hashimi told Bearden, "if the Saudis stepped in."
Five days later, bin Laden remained at large and the United States began pummeling Kandahar and other Taliban strongholds.
"I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck," Bearden said of bin Laden. "It never clicked."
Staff writers Gilbert M. Gaul, Mary Pat Flaherty and James V. Grimaldi and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
Sorry, but once a catastrophic event like 9/11 occurred,
ANY country that could militarily respond the way the US can: Would.
If the muslim clerics could come up with various fatwahs to govern the minutae of Islamic life, they could have easily come up with one to ostensibly 'order' the Taliban to give ObL to US. Whether the Taliban would comply is another issue but we can reasonably be safe in assuming that the Taliban probably have their own clerics who will give them the religious justifications they need to protect ObL.
No 'knee jerk' response here. Just a very fast military bent on vengeance after its diplomats spent years of attempts at preventing said catastrophe.
I usually provide links but Wapo's archive seems to be broken but long ago I saved the entire article as quoted. Combine all the quoted sections and you will have the entire article as originally published.
don't say Pakistan is your ally and then backstab them by leaving them out in the dark.....Abbotabad --we are told he was indeed there - then why not muster the courage to look beyond Presidential campaign 2012 and instead share a piece of the cake? I mean, use your brain!! If the Americans set up an emergency meeting in Rawalpindi (which when ties were good, Americans could arrange meetings at snap of a finger) and said '''look.....this is urgent. We have a positive ID on geronimo, we have ascertained his location and are at least 90% sure he is at these coordinates....have a team set up and be ready to mobilize soon. Lets get him''
This is an alliance of convenience and a very narrow one at that and everyone here knows it. For what we wanted out of this alliance, the presence of ObL so deep inside Pakistani soil and living quite freely could be seen as the greatest backstab of all backstabs in this alliance. You are grossly naive if you believe that behind closed doors, given how much of Pakistani soil is not under effective Pakistani control and how dubious is the ISI when it comes to allegiance, that we did not warned Pakistan what we would do if we find ObL in Pakistan.
instead, mr. panetta el italiano...
Har...Could not resist an ethnic jab, eh? As if only Italians could get mad.
...tries to talk tough and ends up infuriating not just Islamabad but the whole country...in fact many Americans and people around the world themselves feel a bit left out from the details and specifics.
Why should the public be informed of ObL's location? So some of them could warn him?
9/11 or mumbai fiasco wasn't done to be insult or snub. They were done to increase panic, wage terror on citizens of the countries in which they took place. Good luck trying to label mass majority of Pakistanis as people who would endorse and accept these attacks...cold-blooded. You can't do that label without a fight, because by implying that Pakistanis (and the state) support terrorism then you should seek mental health assistance. How do we gain? I could turn the tables around and ask how did you gain by invading Iraq in 2003? That was act of war against a country that never committed act of war against you.
Was not even implying that. What I was trying to put across is the degree of offensiveness for whatever actions that one may received. The American raid on Abbottabad was nowhere to the scale of 9/11 and with different intent. We violated Pakistani sovereignty not because we wanted to make any sort of political statement the way ObL and al-Qaeda did to US but to take out the moral leader of the 9/11 catastrophe. You want an apology from at least one American here? You got it. Am sorry that the US violated Pakistani sovereignty.
post-911 terrorists waged many 9/11s on Pakistan.....the country has suffered enormously due to terrorist attacks
Sorry, but securing your territory and weed out al-Qaeda sympathizers would help enormously on that.
9/11 was an act of war......but it wasnt war waged by a country. It was war waged by stateless people, outcasts....to scapegoat (poor) countries is not getting revenge professionally.
Sorry, but non-state actors cannot commit such an act of war like 9/11 without state sponsorship.
taliban were never their enemy. They Nurtured taliban and ISI in during Afghan civil war. during 1985-2000 they were in continuous talk with Taliban. If you search on net you can see Taliban leaders visiting USA. USA was in process to get deal of many mines in Afghanistan.
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