Does Hamid Karzai really want to negotiate with Mullah Omar?
Slate By Fred Kaplan 11/18/2008 We must reach out to willing factions. But first they must believe we can win. What’s up with Hamid Karzai? The Afghan president told reporters on Sunday that he would welcome peace negotiations with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former leader of the country’s Taliban regime, and would guarantee his security if he came back to Kabul for the talks. Several top U.S. officials-Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and even President-elect Barack Obama-have recently expressed interest in reaching out to “reconcilable” Taliban fighters, but I somehow doubt they had Mullah Omar in mind. Omar, recall, was the one-eyed “commander of the faithful” during the Taliban’s totalitarian reign. He harbored al-Qaida and allied himself closely with Osama Bin Laden. He has probably been hiding out in western Pakistan since the Taliban was ousted in 2001, but he’s still considered a major threat; the Bush administration put a $10 million bounty on his head, thus
