Peace Talks Abandoned

Once the war in Afghanistan started, United States diplomats and Armed Forces personnel discussed solutions to resolve the conflicts. One of the key ideas behind their solutions involved peace deals with the Taliban. The original intent to end the war through these peace talks was an ambitious goal, but seemed within reach. However, as of late these peace talks have been altogether abandoned. Now, instead of the peace talks, American generals and civilian officials have come up with another solution. The new solution contains the idea of establishing a forefront for the Afghans to wage peace deals amongst themselves. These goals and solutions will not be able to be comprised until 2014, when the NATO troops withdraw. Since NATO has established a so-called "puppet" government, this has hindered many efforts to negotiate peace. Many Afghans are upset with the interim government, but without the stepping in of NATO the Taliban would have taken over all assists of the government. The stepping in of NATO was necessary to maintain to some degree peace amongst the Afghan people. Now the tasks at hand are to slowly withdraw the NATO troops out and to create a forefront for the Afghan people to negotiate peace amongst themselves. (NationalJournal , Stars and Stripes)

The issue that is at hand is a very controversial one. The United States stepped into the conflict to shut down the al-Qaeda and Taliban regimes as well as set up a stable government system. Since the U.S. is abandoning their goals of peace talks with the Taliban regime and are going to be withdrawing troops over the next few years, then won’t the Taliban and al-Qaeda regimes just take back over control once the troops are all gone. Obviously getting the Taliban and Afghans to the table to talk about peace is no easy task, but the U.S. should hold to their best efforts to make this happen. Giving up hope on the peace negotiations is not the direction we should be taking. Like mentioned in the articles, American generals and civilian officials have developed a less drastic plan to set up peace. This can be seen as a last resort effort and if this doesn’t work then where do we turn too? Having the U.S. turn to a new plan may not be the best course of action. They want to get the Afghan people to establish a situation where they can negotiate peace amongst themselves. In my opinion this seems like a shot out to left field. Now lets say the U.S. can get the Afghan people to talk peace amongst themselves, what’s going to stop the Taliban from acting out and claiming power? The U.S. should hold to their original plan of getting the Taliban to the table and talk peace or shut them down altogether. Accommodations need to be arranged for all or the war will keep escalating.

Afghanistan Kids