New Look for Taliban Office in Qatar?

Reports are in that the Taliban have opened an office in Doha, Qatar for the sole purpose of meeting with U.S., Afghan, and Qatar officials for discussions on the war efforts in Afghanistan..

Actually,  there's nothing new about the Taliban having an office in Doha...here's a little background:

I was at a military location near Doha nearly two years ago for a "vacation".  During the vacation, I frequently read a well-known newsletter called "Stars and Stripes".  An article that I held on to was one that concerned me a little.  The article discussed the fact that Janet Napolitano was traveling to the area to meet with Talban officials to discuss a "trade".  The talks were to take place at the Taliban office located in Doha, Qatar, and the "trade" talk subject was one that consisted of the U.S. trading Taliban prisoners at Gitmo in return for the Taliban easing up on the attacks on U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.

I thought this was somewhat non-standard - sending Janet Napolitano to Doha...why?  She was, and still is, the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  What business does she have going to the Middle East?

Something else I thought was a little weird...since when does the U.S. negotiate with terrorists?  Depends...

You see, the U.S. State Department has a counter-terrorism division.  The CT division is responsible for identifying, reporting, and tracking the activities of terrorist groups that meet a certain set of criteria (threat to U.S. national security, etc.), with the approval of Congress, of course.  These groups are called Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).  Here is a link to the State Department's site, go look for yourself:

http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm

On this page, you should notice who is not on the list: the Taliban.  Good tactic, I guess.  By leaving the Taliban off the list, the administration can still negotiate with them without breaking the U.S. policy of "we don't negotiate with terrorists".

There's the resounding question of "why is the U.S. negotiating with these terrorists?" when the real question that needs to be asked is "why the hell isn't this group a U.S.-recognized FTO?".

I suspect it's for the same reason that the White House stopped it's investigation and prosecution of the over 100 unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case in Texas. Go have fun reading up on that one too!