It makes sense. After all, there is no war on terror anymore, so why should there be terrorists?
“United Nations Could Hasten Removal of Taliban Leaders From Terror Blacklist,” by Rod Nordland for the New York Times, June 12 (thanks to Puneet):
KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations is speeding up efforts that could lead to the removal of Taliban leaders from an international terrorist blacklist, the top United Nations official here said Saturday.
At a news conference, the official, Staffan de Mistura, the secretary general’s special representative to Afghanistan, said the United Nations was responding to the call of Afghanistan’s recent consultative peace gathering, called a jirga, to de-list Taliban figures….
Since 1999, Security Council Resolution 1267 has blacklisted 142 Taliban figures as well as 360 others with ties to Al Qaeda, ordering their bank accounts seized and prohibiting them from crossing international borders. The presence of Taliban leaders on the list has been a sticking point in efforts to start peace negotiations with them, but attempts to remove any have foundered because of opposition from Security Council members.
In January, five Taliban insurgents were de-listed before the London Conference on Afghanistan, leaving 137 still blacklisted.
Since January, President Hamid Karzai has been arguing to remove all Taliban names from the blacklist. After the peace jirga made a similar call when it concluded June 4, the jirga chairman, Burhanuddin Rabbani, said bluntly, “Each party to the conflict will be taken on board in the process, and there will be no more blacklists.”…
American officials have argued for removal from the blacklist on a case-by-case basis; Russia and China have objected as well to a broad de-listing of the Taliban….
Although Security Council members could veto any proposal to de-list Taliban leaders, the United Nations official said their opposition was not as hard and fast as it had been. “The Americans would certainly oppose some of the big names,” he said.
Mr. Karzai has suggested that de-listing should include even the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar and the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar….
One huge unasked and unanswered question here is whether or not these jihadists will behave any differently once they’re removed from the terror list. And the obvious answer is, of course not.