Asylum, clean record not enough for Taliban – $1 billion cash offered
Last week, I wrote about efforts to provide Taliban leaders asylum, political positions in the Afghan government and a “clean record” void of previous terrorist activities. Now the United States and Britain are considering a $1 billion ransom payment.
Call it a bribe if you will as it seems to be a popular way to do business in Washington D.C. these days to “get business done.” This evening The Hill reports on a plan to spend around $1 billion over five years to try to get the Taliban to play nice in Afghanistan. The report comes from Al Jazeera.
Update: Michelle Malkin picked up on bribes for bombers. For Malkin visitors … it’s not just bribes, read my post from last week.
Al Jazeera has learnt that a plan is being considered to pay up to $1bn to Taliban fighters to persuade them to lay down their arms.
In advance of an international conference in London to discuss Afghanistan’s future on Thursday, Japan, the United States and Britain are said to be leading the proposal.
The scheme would offer cash, jobs and other incentives to the Taliban and fighters in other armed groups.
“The sum could be as much as between $500m and $1bn over the next five years”, Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from London, said.
He said the money would be used to persuade individual Taliban fighters that they are better off on the government’s side rather than fighting on the side of the Taliban.
Parts of the funds would be spent on projects to develop the fighters’ villages and building roads to their communities, he said.
Bull feathers. My guess is 25 percent of the cash will be used to do what they plan, and the other 75 percent will be used to fight Americans and coalition forces in-country and possibly in other areas.
I don’t like this idea one bit. What ever happened to the practice of unconditional surrender?
This is not some far-off scheme. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently in London – outside of the beltway during the State of the Union address – working with other countries to figure out any way possible to get a temporary – yes I said temporary – win for the Obama administration in Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is skipping tonight’s State of the Union address in Washington, is in London for the talks.
If it was only this easy…
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Thanks for posting this, Steve. With the economic situation in the States, it's easy to not notice what is being hatched up, almost in secret (ie. information via Al Jazeera) like the insane "band-aid" planeed for the Taliban.
New roads and "developing" the fighters' communities??? Are they nuts???? Now the Taliban will be able to dispatch their suicide bombers and IED's much faster. With the potential broad-band access, communications will be far easier with Al Q'aida groups all over the world. And do these idiotic politicians think the Taliban will abandon their primitive views of women, and encourage them to work and be educated? Those new roads that connect them to other villages will enable them to more conveniently slaughter female teachers and students, at a much smarter pace. So much for Mrs. Clinton's support of women's rights.
"Uncontional surrender"? I think those two words have been banned from the military's vocabulary. As they used to say, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it!"