In These New Times

And so it was that 12 years of bloody war have culminated in talks with the Taliban, talks which could have averted the war in the first place.

Jim Lobe

Asia Times

19th June, 2013

WASHINGTON – Nearly 12 years after the United States ousted the Taliban from power, the White House announced on Tuesday that the US will begin formal talks with the militant Islamist group in Qatar later this week as part of Afghanistan’s national reconciliation process. The announcement, which coincided with ceremonies marking the formal transfer of primary security responsibility from US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to their Afghan counterparts, preceded a statement issued shortly afterwards by the Taliban itself in which it implicitly disassociated itself from Al-Qaeda.

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