U.S. supports Afghanistan outreach to Taliban

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday the Taliban were part of Afghanistan’s “political fabric,” one of the clearest indications to date of the Obama administration’s willingness to accept the Islamist group playing a potentially central role in Afghanistan’s future.
Mr. Gates, wrapping up a two-day visit to Pakistan’s capital, told reporters here that the U.S. supported the Afghan government’s continuing outreach efforts to the Afghan Taliban. Afghan President Hamid Karzai plans to unveil a major new reconciliation initiative that will use hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign donations to offer fighters jobs, educations and security guarantees if they will lay down their weapons.
The American defense chief said that he expected significant numbers of lower-level Taliban fighters to accept the Karzai government’s offer, and held the door open for the Taliban to have a formal role in Afghanistan’s political future if it renounced violence and took other moderating steps.
“The Taliban ... are part of the political fabric of Afghanistan at this point,” he said at a roundtable with Pakistani and American journalists here. “The question is whether they are prepared to play a legitimate role in the political fabric of Afghanistan going forward, meaning participating in elections, meaning not assassinating local officials and killing families.”
U.S. military and civilian officials have made clear before that they accepted that the Taliban would not be fully routed from Afghanistan, regardless of the success of the American-led war effort there. But Mr. Gates’s comments were notable because they appeared to lay out a roadmap of sorts for the Taliban to play a formal political role in Afghanistan down the road.
The comments came as Mr. Gates also worked to deepen Washington’s relationship with Islamabad and bolster Pakistan’s continuing military offensive against the country’s militants.
In a vivid illustration of the expanding ties, Mr. Gates told reporters here Friday that the U.S. had decided to give Pakistan at least a dozen unmanned aerial drones. The Shadow drones, which could be delivered within weeks, will carry cameras and other surveillance equipment but will not be able to fire missiles.
Pakistan has requested American drones for years, and senior U.S. officials signaled months ago that they were amenable to the request. But Mr. Gates’s comments Friday marked the first formal high-level confirmation that the drones would be given to the Pakistanis.

The Wall Street Journal