“The solution, the bottom line, is that political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just due share in the political dispensation in Afghanistan.”
“US told it must hold talks with Taliban’s Mullah Omar,” by Isambard Wilkinson in the Telegraph, September 24 :
Owais Ghani, who governs the North West Frontier Province and its adjoining tribal areas, is the most prominent figure to date to publicly advocate holding talks with militant commanders leading the insurgency against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
His thinking reflects that of the conservative hardcore of Pakistan’s military hardliners who are accused by Western intelligence operatives of supporting the Afghan Taliban as a “hedging policy” to maintain influence in Afghanistan.
“They have to talk to Mullah Omar, certainly — not maybe, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani group,” Mr Ghani told The Daily Telegraph in an interview in Peshawar.
“The solution, the bottom line, is that political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just due share in the political dispensation in Afghanistan.”…