News - Afghanistan

Vice President Joe Biden has said that Taliban isn't an enemy of the United States despite years of fighting.

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That's critical," Joe Biden told Newsweek last week.

"There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy, because it threatens US interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us, "he added.

He also added that Afghan war is not to eliminate Taliban; they are not a major issue here.

Mr Biden supported Afghan reconciliation process and said that it's "good enough" for US if Afghanistan is no longer a "haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America."

Meanwhile, the White House on Monday defended Vice President Joe Biden.

"It is a simple fact that we went into Afghanistan because of the attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. We are there now to ultimately defeat al-Qaeda, to stabilise Afghanistan and stabilise it in part so that al-Qaeda or other terrorists who have as their aim attacks on the United States cannot establish a foothold again in that country," White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said.

The US has around 90,000 forces in Afghanistan, fighting insurgents in the country and it lost 1857 soldiers in the Afghan war, according to icasualties.org, a website that keeps a tally of foreign soldiers' deaths.

The US President Barack Obama on June ordered a drawdown of 10,000 American troops later this year, with another 23,000 US troops to return home next year.

But recently Isaf commander in Afghanistan General John Allen said that US will remain in the country beyond 2014.

The US military and diplomatic officials are putting together a new strategy that will commit American troops and money to Afghanistan after 2014.

Meanwhile, some Afghan experts ask why the United States fought the Taliban if it was not its enemy.

Experts say that President Barack Obama should now answer why US forces killed thousands of Afghans over the past ten years under the pretext of fighting the Taliban.

The experts warn that the US is playing a new dangerous game. "If the US is now saying the Taliban is its friend, it should explain to its people and its allies why it fought the Taliban over the past ten years," Nasrullah Stanekzai, a professor of Kabul University, said.

Experts believe that the US had already made preparations for its new policy and some US officials had previously categorised the Taliban as Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban, and that the US had said that the Afghan Taliban had cut links with al-Qaeda.

According to experts, the United States has removed names of some Taliban leaders from its blacklist and based on agreements between the US and the Taliban some high ranking Taliban figures will be freed from Guantanamo soon. The ones to be freed are said to include Maulawi Khairkhah, Noorullah Noori and Fazl Ahmad Fazel.

"The Afghan issue cannot be solved by only the US calling the Taliban its friend. One has to focus on what other groups inside Afghanistan think about the Taliban and what kind of relations they would have," Afghan political analyst, Waheed Muzhda, said.

Mr Muzhda said no one knows what the Taliban's stance would be towards the northern alliance and the Mujahidden in general.