* Engaging with the Taliban no straightforward task * Any such policy requires money, long-term commitment By Luke Baker LONDON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Convincing Taliban militants to renounce violence sounds like a neat way out of eight years of war in Afghanistan, but it will require years of unwavering commitment to development, jobs and training if it is to work. The idea, mooted by various Western diplomats and military commanders, including one who has suggested the Taliban could be "bought off", would be to offer financial and other incentives to encourage wavering militants to abandon the insurgency. Graeme Lamb, a retired British general sent to Afghanistan to find ways of engaging with the Taliban, believes money can work with them as it did when he took on insurgents in Iraq. "If somebody is on the wrong side of the wire and is inclined to come back then ... we have to set the conditions whereby that young man comes back in," he said last week, saying you can "buy an insurgency if you have enough money". That may be so, but as a policy, talking to and de-mobilising the Taliban is far from simple to roll out, says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistan-based academic and author who is a leading authority on the Islamist movement. As well as requiring "buy in" at every level -- from the U.S. administration and its forces, the 41-nation NATO coalition, the Afghan government and army, and the population -- the policy would have to be well-funded and long-term, he said. "You need everyone on side first, and then, whether it's going to be buying the Taliban off or offering them an amnesty, you need to fund jobs, development, training, and make sure that the bad Taliban actually give up their arms and go back to their villages," Rashid told Reuters in an interview. "And once they are there, you need the UNHCR or the Red Cross to guarantee their safety, to act as some sort of neutral force to interact with the Taliban. "This is not some straightforward policy, it requires depth and commitment," said the author of "Descent into Chaos". "It's not something you can just shoot your mouth off about." LONG-TERM GOAL British diplomats, including Foreign Minister David Miliband, have spoken in recent months of the need to find a way of talking to what they refer to as "second- and third-tier" Taliban -- the lesser, more malleable players in the movement. But beyond proposing it as an idea -- at a time when the military strategy, involving 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops, has met with little success and increasing deaths -- they have put little flesh on the bones of the concept. A European official speaking on condition of anonymity said this month that outsiders had attempted via intermediaries to explore the basis for dialogue with the Taliban in the past several years, but none of the contacts had led anywhere. One problem, he said, was a lack of knowledge in the West about the inner workings of the Taliban's leadership council in Pakistan, known as the Quetta Shura and led by Mullah Omar. From Rashid's point of view, trying to talk to Omar or other top-tier Taliban, most of whom are based in Pakistan and maintain contacts with al Qaeda, is pointless. "The top leadership is too ideological, too committed to bin Laden and to global Jihad, too anti-American," said Rashid. "At a strategic level, I can't see that happening. At a tactical level, bringing in rank-and-file Taliban is being talked about, but you can't do that with Mullah Omar." Peeling away lower levels of the Taliban, particularly in isolated areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, may be possible with the right mix of incentives. But it is a lengthy, complex process that risks failure if not followed through. "The Taliban is not going to do this on the basis of some colonel or general in the middle of nowhere telling them it's a good idea," said Rashid. (Additional reporting by William Maclean in London; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Government soldiers patrol a street south of Somalia's capital Mogadishu September 24, 2009. Somali government forces are battling a deadly Islamist insurgency. Somalia will become "the new Afghanistan" unless Western nations ...
