Taliban talks: the new mirage in Afghanistan
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just said in public what many have been saying for months in private, that the United States is holding talks with the Taliban to try to reach a settlement to the decade-long war in Afghanistan. “Peace talks are going on with the Taliban. The foreign military and especially the United States itself is going ahead with these negotiations,” he said in a speech in Kabul.
We have been hearing reports about these talks for months . In the climate of disinformation that threads through the Afghan war, it is hard to say exactly when they started, but I first heard last November that the Americans had begun direct talks with representatives of the Taliban and if that was correct, they must have begun some time before that.
Such direct talks have long been promoted by many Afghan experts as a necessary but not sufficient condition for a political settlement. While western countries have argued that political reconciliation must be Afghan-led, the Americans are the power-brokers, and unlike the administration in Kabul, the only ones who have the authority to deliver on any concessions agreed in the negotiations.
And the United States has also shifted its position on the Taliban — effectively admitting that the movement can be treated separately from al Qaeda by convincing the U.N. Security Council to split its sanctions list imposing asset freezes and travel restrictions into two .
All that said, there is a danger that the U.S. Taliban talks become the new mirage in Afghanistan by suggesting that a political settlement is on the horizon if only the current strategy is maintained. According to senior diplomats involved in international discussions on Afghanistan, the talks have yet to gain any serious traction . One diplomat said the two sides were still “gauging each other’s temperature”; another said that, “there are no serious load-bearing talks going on.”
And despite U.S. insistence that its military campaign in Afghanistan is — to use its favourite phrases - “turning the corner” or “gaining momentum” – one diplomat suggested that the Taliban’s ambitions were still as high as they had been before Washington sent an extra 30,000 troops.
Unlike the role sketched out for them by western governments in which they would folded into a broader political process, he said the Taliban were still looking for a serious stake in power. Among their ambitions would be for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to be rehabilitated as “Amir ul-Mu’mineen”, or supreme leader of the faithful, even if not directly running the government - an idea talked about back in early 2010 .
New Sanctuary Movement - News
the movement's demands for political power remain high. The Taliban is increasing its presence in the north. And in the east, international jihadis are carving out a new sanctuary, expanding out from their original bases in the tribal areas of
Many of this organization's key members go back decades to the earlier Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s involving El Salvadorian political refugees whom the Regan administration refused to give asylum. They took the law into their own hands,
"We know that the law is applied unjustly to families, to workers who are here trying to make a better life," said Juan Carlos Ruiz of the New Sanctuary Movement. In a May 24 report, the Department of Homeland Security said Secure Communities was
However, at point the Pakistani military began creating a new sanctuary for the Haqqani Network in Kurram Agency, one of the seven Pakistani tribal districts situated along the Afghan border. A peace deal, ostensibly for the purpose of ending a
The original structure was built in 1852 and a new sanctuary was added in 1869. On Mother's Day (May 12) of 1929, the church caught fire. The blaze was so enormous that the Flint Fire Department was called in to help. The congregation spent the next
Immigration Justice at Central Baptist Church: Freedom From Fear Award
Central Baptist Church's affiliation with the Philadelphia New Sanctuary Movement is a renewal of CBC's prophetic engagement in the original Sanctuary Movement, declared in a congregational vote in 1984. This reaffirmation today of our historic commitment is grounded in our congregation's vision of “justice rooted in spirituality” and “making a difference in community.”-Congregational Meeting April 25th, 2010. Four students from Philadelphia will receive a Freedom of Fear award for organizing against the violence at South Philadelphia High School where many immigrant students were harassed and terrorized. By standing up for their human right for a safe and non-violent place to learn, they brought the community and the Philadelphia School District to account.
The Unicorn in the Sanctuary: The Impact of the New Age Movement on the Catholic Church: 
The Unicorn in the Sanctuary: The Impact of the New Age Movement on the Catholic Church: New Sanctuary Movement - Bookshelf
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