THE GUARDIAN: Senior Washington officials tell the Guardian of a 'change of mindset' over the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy
The Obama administration is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm.
Negotiation with the Taliban has long been advocated by Hamid Karzai, the Afghanistan president, and the British and Pakistan governments, but resisted by the US.
The Guardian has learned that while the official position of the US government is still resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way, and Washington is now encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.
"There is a change of mindset in DC," a senior official in Washington said. "There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing." The missing element is talks with the Taliban leadership, the official added.
The US rethink comes in the aftermath of the departure in June of General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan Barack Obama, apparently frustrated at the way the war is going, reminded his national security advisers that while he was on the election campaign trail in 2008, he had advocated talking to America's enemies.
A US review of Afghanistan policy is under way, and is due for completion in December, but officials in Washington, Kabul and Islamabad with knowledge of internal discussions said feelers have already been put out. Negotiations would be conducted largely in secret, through a web of contacts, involving governments such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, or organisations with back-channel links to the Taliban. >>> Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Simon Tisdall | Monday, July 19, 2010
