Karzai offers olive branch to Taleban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai marked the 14th anniversary of the defeat of a communist government on Friday with a call to the Taleban to give up their insurgency and rejoin society.
Mujahideen forces captured Kabul on April 28, 1992, ending the rule of a pro-Soviet government but ushering in a civil war that only ended when the Taleban seized power in 1996.
The Taleban, ousted by US and mujahideen forces in late 2001, have in recent months unleashed a wave of roadside and suicide bombings, ambushes and raids, in their drive to oust foreign forces and defeat Karzai's government.
"I call upon all brothers who are still unconsciously the slaves of propaganda ... not to cause killing, bloodshed and insecurity under the orders of others, and ask them to return to their homes and serve their countrymen," Karzai said in a victory day speech.
Karzai, who has been leading Afghanistan since shortly after the Taleban were ousted, first called on rank-and-file Taleban to rejoin society more than two years ago and has repeated it several times, but few have taken up the offer.
A Taleban commander, speaking shortly before Karzai's latest call, urged Afghans to join the jihad, or holy war, to force out foreign "infidels", just as Soviet troops were forced out in the 1980s.
Akhund, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, said the United States and its allies toppled the Taleban and installed a "puppet government" after intense bombing that "martyred thousands of innocent Afghans".
Friday's celebration included a military parade along a road not far from some of the ruins left over from the civil war that followed the capture of Kabul. The military parade was led by trucks pulling two old British cannons, captured during a bloody British incursion into Afghanistan in the nineteenth century.
A stream of old but newly painted Soviet-era armoured personnel carriers, tanks and truck-mounted multiple-rocket launchers followed.
Jets and helicopters thundered over the parade that was watched by Karzai and other top officials as well as senior US and other foreign military officers.