Afghanistan Grants Taliban Immunity

It looks like the 2 week bloggy holiday turned into a one week bloggy holiday.

Because I couldn't not mention this.

Afghanistan's parliament has granted immunity to all Afghans involved in the country's conflicts during the last quarter century despite calls by human rights groups for war crimes trials, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.

The immunity is part of a national stability plan that says that "all those political and belligerent sides who were involved one way or the other during the 2 1/2 decades of war will not be prosecuted legally and judicially."

Both critics and supporters of the move say it covers fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- who now heads his own militant group.

So we have Pakistan funding and sheltering Al Qaeda and the Taliban and now the Afghans have basically pardoned Mullah Omar. We've backed the Afghanis into a corner by dint of the distracting and senseless adventure in Iraq and it would take a moron not to work out that the U.S. is looking to ignore them further while Bush pursues his next war with Iran over likewise trumped-up reasons.

British military sources have been saying for a few months now that this spring could well be the point at which the West lost the war in Afghanistan but I think it has just been pre-empted by those we were supposedly there to help.

Time to withdraw. Time to re-assess. Time to think hard about letting Bush and his cronies run even as much as a fairground ride.