Afghan intellectuals criticise US, NATO operations

This is from AFP via Yahoo. Obviously many Afghans are tired of the fighting and insecurity and are ready to cut a deal with the Taliban if possible. The problem is that with US and NATO forces often on the offensive no deal will be possible. Only if the occupying forces withdraw or perhaps if they take a purely defensive stance would a deal be possible but the US in particular is unlikely to accept this. Karzai depends upon US forces to stay in power but even he seems to be leaning towards negotiating an end to the fighting.

Afghan intellectuals criticise US, NATO operations
Thu May 8, 1:34 PM ET
About 3,000 Afghan politicians and intellectuals criticised Thursday the international military campaign against Islamic militants in Afghanistan and called for dialogue to ending the fighting.
The meeting of mainly Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, launched a new body that it said would work on "saving people captured in fighting" and assist "those involved in conflict to stop fighting."
Afghanistan is in the grips of an insurgency by the extremist Taliban, a majority Pashtun group that was in government between 1996 and 2001. The country depends on about 70,000 mainly US troops for security.
"Today our elders, children and women are captured and jailed," civil society activist Daud Mirakai, one of the founders of the new National Peace Jirga of Afghanistan, told the crowd.
He was referring to arrests of suspects during US- and NATO-led operations mainly in Pashtun-dominated southern and eastern Afghanistan where Taliban militants are most active and are said to have local support.
The forces regularly round up suspects but no women are known to be among them.
"Today, they (foreign forces) break through our doors while our women are sleeping," he continued, raising a highly emotive issue among Pashtuns that prompted shouts of "Allahu akbar" (God is greater).
International troops looking for Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other rebels have been accused of not respecting local culture; they in turn say militants deliberately position themselves among women and children.
Mirakai said international forces claimed to have brought peace and democracy to Afghanistan but this was not true.
Instead "people are forced to abandon their villages under the shells and mortars of US forces and their allies who are killing people first and asking questions later," he said.
Pashtuns were main victims of the unrest, he said, claiming the ethnic group which has ruled for the past two centuries had been pushed aside by the government of President Hamid Karzai, himself a Pashtun.
"Peace in Afghanistan is impossible when Pashtuns are targeted from the air and ground on a daily basis," he added, referring to military operations.
Another key organiser, parliamentarian Bakhtar Aminzai, said the new jirga, the Pashtu word for council, wanted to bring peace through talks with the rebels.
"Fighting is not the solution," he said. "Dialogue and reconciliation is the solution for the conflict," he said.
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