Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan

[W4d5Y]

I shall not relay to you any of my views in regards to this story.

Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.

The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.

President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.

An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.

The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.

A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."

Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.

The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.

But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.

The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban's ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".

The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (?64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.

President Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being "involved in some activities that were not their jobs."

The camp would also have provided vocational training, including farming and irrigation techniques, to offer people a viable alternative to growing opium. But the Afghan government took issue with plans to provide military training, to turn the insurgents into a defence force.

Afghan government staff also claimed the "EU peace-builders" had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. They said the memory stick revealed plans to train the Taliban to use secure satellite phones, so they could communicate directly with UK officials.

Mr Patterson, a Briton, was the third-ranking UN diplomat when he was held. Mr Semple, an Irishman, was the acting head of the EU mission. Officially, the British embassy remains tight-lipped, fuelling speculation that the plan may have been part of a wider clandestine operation.

A spokesman repeated the line used since Christmas: "The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add."

But privately, the UN maintains it had no role in setting up the camp. Meanwhile, Mr Semple's EU boss, Francesc Vendrell, admitted he had very little idea what was going on.

Yet the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, cut short his Christmas holiday to meet President Karzai and "spell out the Foreign Office paper-trail" which diplomats claim proves his government had agreed. They met twice, but it was not enough to stop Mr Semple and Mr Patterson being forced to leave.

Gordon Brown has also said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai".

Source: A reliable one, after all. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...r-taliban-fighters-in-afghanistan-777671.html

 

[Solaris]

Oh **** not another one

 

[Sulkdodds]

I've revived this thread because - for once - it's an interesting story from a reliable source. I think it deserves attention and discussion.
Pi, if you disagree, just delete it again, but I don't see why you should - it's the Independent this time, not Prisonplanet or some shit.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Nice to see a good source. Nice to see wasdy banned too :cheese:

 

[jverne]

why the hell was he banned?

yes he was annoying, but he didn't deserve banning since he started to post more reliable sources

 

[Sulkdodds]

why the hell was he banned?

He was banned for a week or so for the six ridiculous threads he posted in a very short period of time. This is the only one that was worth reviving, if any were.

 

[jverne]

He was banned for a week or so for the six ridiculous threads he posted in a very short period of time. This is the only one that was worth reviving, if any were.

right, so give him another chance.

 

[nurizeko]

President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

I find that amusingly Ironic seeing as without the massive NATO presence his beloved regime would lose a hell of a lot more then a province, in fact I dare say he should be more thankful they have seen to it he has not yet lost his head.


Hehe, but little yapping dog puppet dictators always make me smile when they snap at the hand that lets them pretend to be in control of anything.





Oh, and before any hate falls onto the British soldiers and sholders, first I will say, Guantanamo, CIA european secret tortures, bombing of citizens, shooting of citizens, bombing of allies, shooting of allies, Vietnam, every anti communist dictator of the eighties, false and ever changing motivations for the second gulf war, oil, protecting an "independent" state that only exists because the US military is stationed there because it has oil, so forth so forth, examples of a nations shameful prior activity picked at and used to insult a country in hindsight of the facts, ignore realities of the time, ignore the imperfection of the human condition of which all nations are composed of, smug, smug, arrogance, smirk, self-ego boost at expense of others, thank you.

:imu:

 

[Absinthe]

right, so give him another chance.

He was a stupid spammer. I logged on earlier today to find the the top five topics in the Politics section were made by him one after the other, not to mention the three or four other ones littered across the first page. This has been an almost daily sight. There is simply no need for that crap, no matter who is posting it. And the precious few accidental nuggets of worth he drops occasionally don't make up for that.

Maybe this will teach him to slow down and, maybe, think two damn seconds before he types up whatever hits his head.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

right, so give him another chance.

On top of the three or four other chances he's already had? No. He'll be back in a week - I'm sure you can cope until then.

 

[clarky003]

The whole idea isn't far fetched at all really. The Taliban being essentially elitist patsies kept active through compartmentalized organisations within MI6 and the CIA who answer to the super rich/elite, banking families, Bilderberg etc. Fund and supply them, then use them to invoke peoples hatred and provide them with a means to attack innocent people, and you have your enemy with which they can use to manipulate you through fear, to justify wars, and aggressive posturing, and used as a tool to develop their plans for the world.

Few people hold the power on this planet and with the way it's structured it's easy to manipulate the masses if you have all the wealth, it just adds to the credence that the world is a stage.