US losing Afghan war, resorts to talks with Taliban

The US plans to hold negotiations with the Taliban because the occupation of Afghanistan is failing, antiwar activist Joe Iosbaker tells Press TV.

Washington is preparing for the talks “because the US occupation of Afghanistan is failing and it’s losing and that’s happening because the war launched by the US in 2001 is an unjust war,” Iosbaker, a leader in the United National Antiwar Committee, said on Tuesday.

According to a report by the Washington Post, the Obama administration has decided to resume talks with the Taliban and offer them to trade their prisoners held at Guantanamo, a CIA-run prison in Cuba, for Bowe Bergdahl, a captive US Army sergeant.

US officials hope they will swap five members of the Taliban with Bergdahl, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2009. The American soldier is believed to be held in Pakistan by the Haqqani network, the Post said citing an allied militant group.

Iosbaker said all US wars are doomed to failure adding that the war in Afghanistan has the same features of wars in other countries which have all been imperialistic, lethal and brutal.

“It [the Afghan war] has been characterized by the same features of all our wars; first, imperialist objects, domination of a land for its natural resources now Afghanistan does not have oil but its neighbors do; second, the occupation has been lethal, resulting in many tens of thousands of deaths.

“It has been characterized by brutality including the mass murders of innocents. And it has come with torture chambers most famously Guantanamo and Bagram. And third, this war has spawned new wars especially the drone wars primarily in Pakistan,” he explained.

“The US will lose in Afghanistan, it will lose in Syria and in Africa and everywhere they launched their wars, these wars are to serve their corporate interests, their imperialist interests and nothing else,” the antiwar activist said.

AT/HRJ