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Saturday, March 06, 2010
Holbrooke ‘agnostic’ over Pak stance on Afghan Taliban
* US special envoy says Obama to begin pulling troops from Afghanistan in July 2011
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: The US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke has said that he is “agnostic” about whether Islamabad had turned decisively against the Afghan Taliban, according to an article published in the Financial Times on Friday.
Last month, Pakistani police arrested Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the operational commander of the Afghan Taliban, in a raid that was later shown to have been inadvertent.
“Everyone has asked the same question. How do you know? Have we turned a corner? I’m not prepared to make those judgements, and you’ll have to ask the Pakistanis that,” he said. “I’m an agnostic at this point... as to whether this was a policy change [by Islamabad] or a serendipitous collection of discrete events,” Holbrooke said.
He declined to say whether the US was getting good intelligence from the joint interrogation of Baradar. But Holbrooke said he had “no problems” with the Pakistani court’s denial of a request last week to transfer Baradar to Afghanistan.
Pledge: On the timing of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Holbrooke said US President Barack Obama would keep his pledge to begin pulling out troops in July 2011.
Holbrooke said the US and its allies face a “daunting” task in Afghanistan and “it is much too early” to predict how it will turn out.
“You can’t occupy every piece of terrain, so the real key is building and transferring control to the Afghan security forces,” Holbrooke said.
Holbrooke, who fell out with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over alleged widespread fraud in the first round of the presidential election in August, offered a sobering assessment of Kabul’s ability to substitute for foreign forces as they withdraw.
Last month US and British forces launched the first spring offensive following the 30,000-strong US troop surge in Marjah. A new offensive is expected in Kandahar soon.
Holbrooke said the task of training competent police and military forces was “an extraordinarily difficult part of the process”.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk