‘US should have talked to Taliban in 2002 to find political solution’

London: Top British commander has reportedly said that the west could have struck a deal with Taliban a decade ago when they had just been toppled from power.

General Nick Carter said the Taliban had been toppled from power in 2002 and if at that stage had the west been prescient, they may have spotted a final political solution to what started in 2001 which would have involved getting all Afghans to sit at the table and talk about their future, the Guardian reports. According to the report, Afghan forces would need western military and financial support for several years after western combat troops head home in 2014 but the Kabul government needs to accept that it will have shaky control over remote parts of country, the Guardian reports. Carter further said that solutions to political problems like the nations have been encountering can only be solved by people talking to each other. Although, the US and Afghan governments have been negotiating to end a conflict that has dragged on for more than 12 years but critics have argued that the west could have struck a deal with moderate Taliban leaders after ousting the group from power in 2001. Alex Strick von Linschoten, author of An Enemy We Created , who studies the Taliban said that the group tried to reach out to their own and the US governments until 2004, and would have made major compromises because the Taliban`s senior leadership made their approaches in a conciliatory manner, acknowledging the new order in the country. Carter said that he was confident that Nato`s handover of security to Afghan forces would eventually bring the Taliban to the negotiating table as they are now up against security forces who have the time, and they are also Afghan forces and there is every chance people will realise that talking is the answer to this problem. He further said that spectacular attacks in Kabul and elsewhere are not surprising as people like to negotiate from a position of strength and opponents of Afghanistan would like to appear to compel the international community’s withdrawal adding that some local political solutions which won`t in any way threaten central government may go on for a while, the report added. ANI