WASHINGTON, May 13: The Taliban can be defeated militarily in Afghanistan but the job remains to be finished, according to a key US Senator.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told “Fox News Sunday” that Pakistan was key to defeating the Taliban in both countries and expressed frustration that Pakistan had failed to deprive them of a safe haven in the rugged mountain areas along its Afghan border.
“Militarily, I think the Taliban are not going to beat us,” she said. But the Taliban “have a safe harbour in Pakistan and the Pakistanis are doing nothing to abate that safe haven,” Ms Feinstein alleged.
What “the Taliban have done is insinuate themselves in a shadowy presence, with shadow governors. They controlled over a third of the land where people live. They expanded into the north, into the northeast,” Ms Feinstein said.
“And while we were there in one province, they closed 14 schools in 17 districts and then they killed five education officials and wounded others,” she told Fox News.
“And now, there’s this latest assassination of someone who’s been a leader in the Peace Council,” she said. Gunmen shot dead a top Afghan peace negotiator in Kabul on Sunday, dealing another blow to attempts to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban. Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, 68, was one of the most senior and important members on Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, set up by President Hamid Karzai two years ago to liaise with the militants.
“What this does is demonstrate to many of us that the Taliban is just waiting to come back” when US troops leave the country over the next few years, Senator Feinstein said.
The Taliban “are taxing the poppy in the south to the tune of $125 million, which in 2011 — this is the United Nations figure — went to support their operations”.
“The question comes ‘can they come back?’ ” said Feinstein, who visited Afghanistan as part of a congressional team last month. She said Mr Karzai had assured her he would not allow the Taliban to return to power.
Ms Feinstein said assurance by the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, that the number of trained Afghan troops will reach 362,000 was “very positive”.—Reuters