Oct. 16 (EIRNS)—In an interview with the Indian news agency Rediff, the chief secretary of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Rustam Shah Mohmand, said that the United States and the Afghan Taliban must come to an agreement. A benchmark is not a prerequisite to that, he said, but "these benchmarks have to be set up by a contact group comprising countries such as Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and India."
The chief secretary's remarks are the exact replica of formulation that EIR had presented in its Oct. 16, 2009 issue. That article, titled "The Solution to the Afghan Imbroglio," has been widely circulated in India and Pakistan.
During his interview, Mohmand pointed out certain other facts that EIR has stressed repeatedly, but which have been ignored by both the previous and the present U.S. administrations. "We have to understand that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda have totally different targets," he said, "and also that the Afghan Taliban are different from the Pakistani Taliban--and there is evidence of this." He said the fear is that if the United States leaves Afghanistan, the country will fall into the hands of the Taliban. But that is not so, because "the Afghan people are not Taliban. But yes, there is a national liberation struggle on in Afghanistan against forces of occupation. And even ordinary Afghans have risen up against them."
He also noted that "the Afghan Taliban have been telling the Pakistani Taliban not to attack government forces and installations. But the Pakistani Taliban have not paid heed to this advice," the reason for this being--although Mohmand did not point it out--that the Pakistani Taliban is under control of the Saudi-British nexus.
