In yet another surprising yet ignored turn in the Afghan shift from war to peacemaking, Western powers beyond NATO and the Afghan government have agreed to establish a $500 million fund to incentivize Taliban disarmament and reintegration. The agreement was reached and the announcement made at the London conference of 70-nations but has received almost no coverage in the US and piecemeal elsewhere. This blatant failure of the news media, whether pressured to do so by government or based on its own war bias, comes at a pivotal moment that could decide the fate of US soldiers there and natives alike.
Incongruously, the fund comes in the wake of the ‘troop surge’ urged by NATO commander General McChrystal and agreed to by President Obama. While McChrysta has spoken in favor of seeking peace with the Taliban (as previously reported on One World, Many Peaces), President Obama and chief diplomat Hillary Clinton have yet to make a pronouncement on the peacemaking efforts, including during Obama’s State of the Union address last week. We wonder what NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had in mind in saying: “Much attention is on the new reconciliation and reintegration effort initiated by the Afghan government. Questions were raised if we are bribing the Taliban just to get peace.”
The strongest supporter of the pay-for-peace fund is US-ally Saudi Arabia, which has a special relationship with the Taliban since it was one of the few countries to recognize its regime in Afghanistan before it was ousted in 2001. The purpose of the fund is to try to convince rank-and-file Taliban members to give up the fight in exchange for cash and land in quantities the Taliban cannot guarantee. However, as Georgetown University's Christine Fair, who has analyzed Taliban suicide attacks in Afghanistan for the U.N., notes: “You also need political incentives to bring them into the picture,” not a current event in sight, especially in the future the US media is creating.
