KABUL: The West should have negotiated with the Taliban more than a decade ago, soon after they were toppled, Britain’s senior general in Afghanistan said yesterday after recent efforts to start peace talks collapsed in ignominy.
General Nick Carter told the London-based Guardian newspaper that an opportunity to bring peace to Afghanistan was missed when the Taliban were on the defensive in 2002 after they were ousted following the 9/11 attacks. “The Taliban were on the run,” he said. “At that stage, if we had been very prescient, we might have spotted that a final political solution... would have involved getting all Afghans to sit at the table and talk about their future.”
Carter, deputy commander of the Nato-led coalition, said Afghanistan’s problems were political issues that “are only ever solved by people talking to each other”.
“First of all, people like to negotiate from a position of strength, and secondly I think the opponents of Afghanistan would like to appear to compel the international community’s withdrawal,” Carter said.
“I don’t think it’s surprising that we are seeing spectacular attacks in Kabul and a continuance of attacks elsewhere.”
AFP
