Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered yet another temporary peace agreement on a religious holiday, akin to the agreement honored by both sides in mid-June. This cease fire will revolve around Eid al-Adha, and the despite the heavy fighting between NATO forces and the Afghan government against the Taliban in Ghazni recently, the Taliban have agreed.
There is no plan for the fighting to stop entirely — like the last cease-fire, the war will likely promptly resume the moment the holiday is over.
Eid al-Adha extends from Aug. 20-21.
In a statement, the Taliban said that,
Seventeen years earlier when the American invaders were busy building an international alliance to occupy Afghanistan, the Islamic Emirate urged them to adopt the path of dialogue and wise politics instead of war. However the American president chose ineptitude and entered a war that has come at a great cost for the American people.
This war that is has been called the longest, costliest and most futile war in American history, plunged the entire region and the world including Afghanistan into insecurity and chaos.
A war that has cost Americans loss of security, prestige and mental wellbeing globally and even inside America itself.
But the Islamic Emirate continues to call America towards understanding and sound logic instead of force and points them towards options that can guarantee the secession and end of this long war, and that lone option is to end the occupation of Afghanistan and nothing more.”
And later,
Even now if they show readiness for direct dialogue with the Islamic Emirate by accepting the ground realities of Afghanistan, we will view it as a sound step by America.
Sincere, transparent and result-oriented negotiations are an important part of our policy. But negotiations must be sincere and productive free from any fraud and deception and must revolve around the core issue and not be used for propaganda or misleading the common thinking.
We reassure our people and all the Muslims that during negotiations, only those decisions will be satisfactory and acceptable to us that preserve our Islamic goals, sovereignty of our homeland and insure an end to the war.”
Read the entire statement here.
It is likely that despite the intentions of the higher-up Taliban personnel, they have to talk in such ways to their own. They have built a culture (a whole generation, given the length of the war) on the fundamental premise that the U.S. invasion is the epitome of evil and wrongdoing. Making a complete turn from that rhetoric might threaten to fracture the Taliban entirely, and so they will likely continue in this manner of speech until the war’s end.
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