US policy in Middle East schizophrenic: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed former US congressional staffer Rodney Martin to talk about Washington’s policy in Afghanistan and the recent release of a US soldier in exchange for five Afghan prisoners.

Below is a rough transcript of the interview.

Press TV: First of all, what do you make of the US policy on the one hand expressing hope for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, while at the same time engaging militarily with them on the ground in Afghanistan?

Martin: Well, the United States’ policy has always been rather schizophrenic in the Middle East because they are a lot of Zionist influences driving US policy; but it’s important to note that Sergeant [Bowe] Bergdahl spent nearly five years in captivity and the United States has an obligation to bring its servicemen home, particularly in light of the scandals involving POWs [prisoners of war] and MIAs [the missing in action] in Vietnam.

It’s important to also note that there are a lot of political issues going on regarding this issue. The Taliban is not the entity that is often referred to as al-Qaeda. The Taliban was the government of Afghanistan and as far back as in the 1990s, back in 1997, the United States was negotiating with the Taliban. The Taliban delegation came to the United States, and as a matter of fact, the Taliban had seated a United Nations permanent representative in the United Nations. So, negotiations with the Taliban go as far back to 1996-1997. I think that is important to note.

Press TV: Now, Mr. Martin, also speaking of political factors playing in over here, the role of Qatar, I’d like you to give your opinion on that. We’ve seen that Qatar has in the past also agreed to host the headquarters of the Taliban. And now, these five Guantanamo prisoners are being released on the soil of Qatar. What do you make of that?

Martin: Well, I think that Qatar has been playing an interesting role in the geopolitical situation on behalf of the United States as well, in the Syrian conflict as well. They have even recently implicated that that role was well and I think the best situation is for Qatar to act on behalf of its interests only and not acting as a broker in these types of arrangements. I think direct dialogue between the United States and the Taliban is what is going to bring this silly conflict to an end.

It’s important to also note that these five prisoners were never going to be able to be legally tried in the US court anyway due to constitutional violations and that these five prisoners were ministers of the interior, were provincial governors, they were governmental ministers, that after the fact that the neocon media in the United States started to label terrorists… and we have to be very careful and accurate in our depiction, particularly in the United States as to what has taken place.

Basically, Taliban governmental officials were exchanged for a US prisoner, soldier, and the US solider shouldn’t have been there [Afghanistan] anyway. And I will be posting the US soldier’s final email before he was captured at ana-ann.com. It’s very revealing. He learned very quickly the utter contempt in which the United States holds peoples in the Middle East and that policy has to change.