Will Obama Join In on Anglo-Saudi Scheme To Put Taliban Back in Power in Kabul?

February 6, 2010 (LPAC)—In the aftermath of the London Conference on Afghanistan last week, the British and Saudis are on a full-court press to reinstall the Taliban in power in Kabul. And despite protests at the London meeting by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, there are indications that such a deal may actually be in the works—with the de facto blessing of the Obama White House.

The British stance was spelled out in graphic detail in an op-ed column in the Feb. 5 Financial Times by Michael Semple, the British European Union "diplomat" who was kicked out of Afghanistan in 2007 by the Karzai government, for negotiating directly with the Taliban, behind the back of the Afghan regime. Semple is now at the Carr Center at Harvard University, a hub of "humanitarian interventionist" propaganda, which also has Samantha Powers and Sarah Sewall on the faculty. Both are leading advisors to President Barack Obama. Samantha Powers, an avowed enemy of Hillary Clinton, is a close ally of Susan Rice, and is married to behavioral economist and leading Obama White House economic advisor, Cass Sunstein.

In his Financial Times piece, Semple explicitly called for a grand bargain with the Taliban's top leadership, leading to their full legitimization and power sharing. Boasting of his own "discreet contacts" with the Taliban leadership, over the course of his eight years in Afghanistan, Semple argued that the Taliban would be willing to cut off ties to Al-Qaeda, and renounce some of their medieval practices, particularly towards women, for a share of power. Semple argued that Afghanistan was less corrupt and more stable under Taliban rule than it is under Karzai. A political settlement with the top Taliban, he argued, would allow for the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from the country, starting almost immediately.

The Semple pitch for Taliban rule over Afghanistan came the same day that the New York Times published comments by U.S. Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, while he was in Istanbul attending a NATO strategy session. In what amounted to a dramatic reversal of his scheme for a long-term Vietnam-style counterinsurgency program, McChrystal offered a fig leaf both to the Taliban and to Afghanistan's opium lords to come out of the cold and enter a power-sharing arrangement. Gen. McChrystal publicly announced that U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces were about to launch a major military campaign in Helmand Province, provoking widespread criticism for pre-announcing a major military operations. McChrystal defended his announcement, by explaining that he was offering the combatants the opportunity to avoid the battle. "If they want to fight, then obviously that will have to be an outcome. But if they don't want to fight, that's fine, too, if they want to integrate into the government." He later elaborated, "This is all a war of perception. This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants."

Several leading U.S. intelligence sources, briefed by EIR on the McChrystal apparent reversal, confirmed the shift in gears. According to one top intelligence official, the situation on the ground has changed, and it is now clear that the ambitious counterinsurgency program spelled out by McChrystal, cannot be achieved in the constraints of time and resourcing available to the United States. Furthermore, Afghan President Karzai has been offered a reported $200 million in aid from Saudi Arabia, for cutting a deal with the Taliban. According to the source, the British are enthusiastically backing the re-Talibanization of Afghanistan, because it assures that the region will be engulfed in permanent "managed chaos," which will spill over into China and Central Asia, and will constantly fuel the India-Pakistan conflict. Furthermore, according to a senior Pentagon source, Secretary of Defense Gates has been carrying out a cooperative project with China, involving the mining of rich veins of copper and iron in the Afghan mountains. London wants to get their hands on these resources, and a power-sharing deal with the Taliban, involving the departure, over a short period of time, of the U.S. and NATO forces, would likely drive the Chinese out. Right now, the U.S. military is providing security to the Chinese mining companies, under a bilateral agreement that Gates initially established with Beijing towards the end of the Bush 43 Presidency.