US, Nato forces in covert deals with Afghan Taliban

By: Ashraf Javed

LAHORE – The United States-led NATO and Afghan forces in Kabul are gravely worried of the heightened activities of the Taliban in the war-torn region. To save themselves, they are engaged in unsoldierly businesses.
‘Now, the US, NATO and Afghan forces are in deals with warlords and Taliban to keep them dormant, thus indirectly funding the Taliban fighting potential’, well-informed diplomatic sources confided to The Nation on Friday.
A well-placed Afghan official, based in Kabul, had startling disclosures about the underhand deals and concessions offered to Taliban in various provinces of Afghanistan in the recent past as public pressure is mounting in the West to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, said to be the ‘graveyard of great empires.’
According to him, the US and NATO are fighting Taliban freedom fighters on one hand but at the same time they are paying huge amount of cash and weapons to Taliban to buy local safety and safe passages.
‘Afghan officials like Governor Balkh Ustad Atta Muhammad and others pay millions of Afghanis and provide large number of weapons to representatives of Taliban in their areas. In return, this ‘Attaya’ force of the Taliban guarantee safety to the officials and their families’, the source disclosed to this reporter, seeking anonymity.
Another Kabul based official also revealed that certain government officials were in league with the Taliban and other Opposition groups to defame government of President Hamid Karzai on one pretext or the other.

The combat alliance of 46 countries deployed in different provinces of Afghanistan, have evolved their respective mechanism to ensure safety to their troops and supply convoys.
This is like an open secret in Kabul that ‘Germany, France, Holland and the UK, all have brokered local peace deals with the Taliban to avoid casualties. Does it portray a reluctance of the military to face the adversary?’ questioned the Afghan official.
Often, the front remains the security companies who deal on behalf of US and NATO with Taliban and broker a safe passage or occasional calm in the local areas, he maintained. Sources further said that this outcome was then portrayed at international level as an operational success of US and NATO.
In December 2009, the US Congress in a wide-ranging probe confirmed that private security companies, hired to protect defence convoys in Afghanistan, were paying off Taliban and warlords for safe passage.
This remains a testimony about the US and NATO double standards; paying for local securities being unable to cover their operational vulnerabilities with all their air power and military might.
Out of operational compulsions, US and NATO are infact, feeding the Taliban and warlords to use the same money to perpetuate their activities, or in other words ‘keep the ball rolling’.