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Biden Sees Conversion of Taliban in Afghanistan (Update1)
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By James G. Neuger
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Joe Biden said at least 70 percent of Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan are mercenaries who could be persuaded to lay down their arms, stepping up U.S. calls for outreach to “moderate” elements of the insurgency.
Biden said the same tactics used in Anbar province in Iraq, where radical Sunni Muslims were co-opted by American financial support, could work in Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama’s strategy for winning the war raging since 2001.
“Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated,” Biden told a press conference at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels today. “Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, of the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. Roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money.”
Insurgent activity in Afghanistan rose last year to the highest level since the U.S. ousted the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks, and coordinated suicide bombings last month shook the capital, Kabul. The increasing peril to the country prompted Obama to order 17,000 additional U.S. troops into the war.
‘Far From Lost’
“We are not now winning the war, but the war is far from lost,” Biden said.
The Taliban most susceptible to being converted are those who live in Afghanistan rather than those from Pakistan who carry out violence across the border, said James Dobbins, the U.S. representative to the Afghan opposition fighting the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The insurgents might be disarmed by a combination of tribal loyalties, financial inducements and offers of participation in the political process, said Dobbins, director of the international security and defense policy center at the Rand Corp. research group in Washington.
“We ought to be making efforts such as the vice president suggested,” Dobbins said. “I think dialogue needs to be pursued both at the higher level but at the local level as well.”
Higher-level contacts probably would have to be pursued by the government of President Hamid Karzai, while the U.S. could approach local tribal figures, Dobbins said.
Keane on Strategy
Former Army General Jack Keane, who helped devise the strategy used by the U.S. military in Iraq, said it will be necessary to change the military balance in Afghanistan before serious talks with insurgents are possible.
“The majority of the Taliban will not respond to negotiation until they are convinced they cannot win,” Keane said “Then, political accommodation may be attractive.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Obama floated the idea of engaging with non-radical members of the insurgency, as Afghanistan heads toward Aug. 20 elections that will test its ability to govern itself.
Emphasizing that the Afghan government would have to take the lead, Biden said “it is worth engaging and determining whether or not there are those who are willing to participate in a secure and stable Afghan state.”
Holbrooke’s Assessment
Biden said the breakdown of Taliban adherents into three categories came from Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Biden came to NATO headquarters to solicit allied input on Afghanistan, making a visible break with what some Europeans saw as the unilateralism of the Bush administration.
As he pulls U.S. troops out of Iraq, Obama last month ordered the additional soldiers to Afghanistan to finish a war that he says Bush failed to pursue with sufficient firepower.
A U.S. contingent of 25,000 military personnel forms the core of NATO’s force in Afghanistan, with roughly 13,000 more U.S. troops conducting counterterrorism missions independently of alliance command. The rest of NATO has fielded 31,000 troops, led by 8,300 from the U.K.
Biden warned that terror groups are using Afghanistan and Pakistan as staging areas to plot new attacks against allied interests around the world.
“It is from this same area that al-Qaeda and its extremist allies are regenerating and conceiving new atrocities to visit upon us,” Biden said.
Biden’s talks were part of a U.S. review of Afghanistan policy that Obama plans to complete in time for an April 3-4 summit of NATO leaders, to be co-hosted by France and Germany.
Earlier in central Brussels, Greenpeace protesters at a meeting of European Union finance ministers sought to block access to the EU building where Biden headed for a lunch with European officials.
Some of the 200 protesters chained themselves to the gates of the EU compound. Belgian police sawed through the chains and cleared the driveway to the building.
To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at [email protected]
Last Updated: March 10, 2009 16:56 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601074&sid=aYvhEVEllXA8&refer=politics#