Carlotta Gall of the New York Times reports that one of Aghanistan’s major insurgent groups has come forward with a peace proposal:
The delegation represents fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 60, one of the most brutal of Afghanistan’s former resistance fighters who leads a part of the insurgency against American, NATO and Afghan forces in the north and northeast of the country.
….Though the insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, or Islamic Party, operates under a separate command from the Taliban, it has links to the Taliban leadership and Al Qaeda and has fought on a common front against foreign forces in Afghanistan. A spokesman for the delegation, Mohammad Daoud Abedi, said the Taliban, which makes up the bulk of the insurgency, would be willing to go along with the plan if a date was set for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country.
Robert Dreyfuss calls this “the most important peace initiative since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001” and points to other reporting suggesting that Pakistan is getting ready to deal too:
The big question hovering over all of this is: Does the Obama administration have the savvy to undertake a vast, regional approach that sees Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China components and participants in a deal? Can it make all of those moving parts fit together? Can it do that, while doing the same in Iraq, where it was to work closely with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan? And can it do all of that while hammering away at the Israel-Palestine conundrum, which is approaching a major turning point, too? Stay tuned.
Quite.
