US envoy: Some Afghan factions won't be reconciled

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_PAKISTAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-05-19-12-39-53

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- A top U.S. envoy said Thursday that not all insurgent factions in Afghanistan will agree to enter the peace process, meaning that force will be necessary to subdue the holdouts.

The envoy, Marc Grossman, was in the region to try to patch up ties with Pakistan, whose cooperation is considered key to bringing the Afghan war to an end.

Grossman's comments underscored the complexity of reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan, even as some observers hope that America's killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden would nudge some Afghan Taliban to shed their affiliation with the terror network and join eventual peace talks.

"Will everybody be reconciled? No, I'm afraid not," Grossman told Express 24/7, a private Pakistani channel. "There are going to be people who will never be reconciled, and unfortunately, they will have to be defeated militarily, and defeated by the police and defeated by anti-terror forces."

[pinqy]

1. Is this really a surpise to anybody?

Many of the factions are just drug-running thugs.

[coalition_unwilling]

2. Care to be specific there? Last I heard, Karzai's own brother

had been implicated as a 'drug-running thug'.

[pinqy]

4. Which brother? He has 6

I believe that Mahmood is facing some tax charges here in the US. But that's not what you're talking about.

While at the upper levels of Afghan insurgents I don't doubt there are real idealogues, but at the lower levels? It's tribal politics, drugs, and local power. If you control a few villages or a valley, you're just concerned with keeping what you have and have no need for any grand reconciliation.

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. Well gee whiz! Who could have predicted this?

Could the fact that there has been tribal warfare in that region since recorded history began be a possible reason? It is simply mind boggling to think that the US could ever FORCE these people to get along without killing them on a much vaster scale than at present?