“Pragmatism”
“We cannot get around it. We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy.”
“Danish soldiers negotiating with Afghan Taliban: report,” from AFP, February 16 :
Danish soldiers in Afghanistan have begun negotiating with the Taliban to try to break the deadlock there, a newspaper reported Monday, as a poll suggested most Danes considered the war unwinnable.
Troops had holding talks with the Taliban as wiping out the insurgency was proving so difficult, a Danish officer told the Jyllands-Posten daily.
“We have already held several meetings with local chiefs where the Taliban were represented,” Lieutenant Colonel Bjarne Hoejgaard told the paper after a six-month mission in Afghanistan.
“We cannot get around it. We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy,” he added.
Hoejgaard insisted the meetings were not about negotiating a truce with the most extreme elements, but were aimed at creating more security for Danish soldiers by entering into dialogue with more moderate, local Taliban.
“The more local Taliban we kill the more enemies we create,” Hoejgaard said.
The report came as a new poll showed that 55 percent of Danes believed the war against the Taliban insurgency could not be won…