A break with Al Qaeda, long demanded by the West and Karzai's government, would be central to any political settlement, and the Obama administration has lately backed off on a demand that this pledge be a new shoes of 2011 precondition to any talks.In the aftermath of Bin Laden's death, the White House has explicitly signaled its desire to promote negotiations between the Taliban and the Karzai government. Within hours of the announcement that the Al Qaeda leader had been killed, Clinton made an unusually direct public appeal to the Taliban to look to the bargaining table instead of the battlefield. "You can make the choice to abandon Al Qaeda and participate in a peaceful political process," she said. The Obama administration's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, also made promoting reconciliation the focus of a visit to the region days after Bin Laden's death.In the days immediately following Bin Laden's bloody end, the Taliban leadership was silent — a rare occurrence for a movement that normally unleashes a flood of loquacious commentary on any development concerning the conflict. Only on Friday, after Al Qaeda confirmed his death, did the Taliban issue a somewhat perfunctory statement praising Bin Laden as a martyr and vowing to continue the fight against Western "invaders."The relatively tepid rhetoric in response to the killing has given rise to speculation that the group may be positioning itself to sever ties with Al Qaeda, with which it has long had differences anyway. The Taliban sheltered Al Qaeda before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, but their agendas have diverged in recent years and the alliance had been held together in part by Omar's personal friendship with Bin Laden."This is a good time for Taliban leaders to consider their options, and it seems they may be doing so," said Haji Agha Lalai, a provincial council member in Kandahar who has been active in the push for "reconciliation," as the nascent peace process is known.But even though Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that the insurgents "cannot wait us out" in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters may have more reason than ever to believe they can do just that.The Taliban leadership, always closely attuned to U.S. domestic political sentiments, is well aware of the pressure on President Obama to soon decide the scope of an American troop drawdown that is to begin in July, and of the chorus of calls to wind down the war in the wake of Bin Laden's killing.Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his allies in Washington are hoping that Osama bin Laden's demise will prod the Taliban into joining peace negotiations. But the aftermath of the raid in Pakistan that killed the Al Qaeda leader could just as easily embolden the Afghan insurgent group in its long struggle against the West.The dramatic U.S. strike against Bin Laden may provide the Taliban with greater incentives to talk rather than fight, not least the fear that its own senior leadership could suffer the same fate as the chief of its longtime ally.Afghan Taliban chieftain Mullah Mohammed Omar is also thought to be sheltering in Pakistan, probably somewhere in Baluchistan province, which until now had been presumed too deep inside the country for a U.S. raid to pose a genuine pillow pets threat. Now that assumption appears shaky.
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