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Taliban, US Begin Talks in Qatar →
It was headline news (at least on the BBC) when Hamid Karzai said he would negotiate with the Taliban, but this report on the Voice of America was the only report I saw of US representatives meeting with the Taliban. It is interesting that they chose Qatar as a venue, since I just wrote about Qatar’s growing diplomatic profile.
The VOA story cites Maulavi Qalamuddin as a source. A Washington Post story of 21 June 2011, Former feared Taliban enforcer now promoting peace in Afghanistan, called Qalamuddin, “one of the most feared figures of the Taliban government.” Qalamuddin was deputy minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice — that is to say, he headed the Taliban’s religious police.
These are ruthless and unpleasant people to deal with, and this seems like a particularly inauspicious moment to attempt to engage with representatives of systematic, religiously inspired oppression, given the widely reported stories over the past couple of days of “honor killings” by Afghans in Canada.
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