The Taliban Don't Want Our Money

So much for the idea of bribing the Taliban into passivity while the international community slinks off with their tails between their legs.

They don't want our money. They want to own Afghanistan and they will continue to kill as many of the locals as they deem necessary in order to get what they want:

A team of militants launched a spectacular assault at the heart of the Afghan government Monday, with two men detonating suicide bombs and the rest fighting to the death only 50 yards from the gates of the presidential palace.

This wasn't just the latest in a string of useless atrocities. This was a clear rejection of what is being proposed: a trust fund for terrorists.

A second Taliban representative, also reached by phone, said the attack was intended to answer American and Afghan proposals to “reconcile” with and “reintegrate” Taliban fighters into mainstream society. The plan is a central part of the American-backed campaign to turn the tide of the war, and will be showcased later this month at an international conference in London.

“We are ready to fight, and we have the strength to fight, and nobody from the Taliban side is ready to make any kind of deal,” Mr. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said. “The world community and the international forces are trying to buy the Taliban, and that is why we are showing that we are not for sale.”

CASC co-founder Terry Glavin has delivered an excellent analysis of what this means going forward and why it is so essential for Canada to take a position:

In little more than a week from now, in London, foreign ministers and other senior representatives from the entire ISAF alliance will gather with the UN's Ban Ki-Moon, Afghan president Hamid Karzai and top NATO officials. They will be making an historic decision about the way forward in the most ambitious undertaking in the UN's history, a project in which Canada, in spite of itself, has until now played an extraordinarily important role. As things stand at the moment, all Canadians can say with any certainty about what Ottawa's contribution will be in London is that it should be expected to include an announcement along the lines of, The Boss says that if there is even one Canadian soldier reporting for duty in Afghanistan after 2011, he must be assigned to guard an embassy, and he must be odd.