April 30th Guardian electronic edition opens with the revelation: "Bin Laden aided Taliban until death" which would seem like a platitude, if it was not for the fact the whole of the Western strategy is based on the desperate attempt to dissociate the two terrorist outfits.
In the last few years the Western political establishment together with Afghan authorities and its neighbouring powers has been busy making the case for engaging the Taliban, the Pakistani based terrorist outfit, and the Hezb-i-Islami, the most fanatic group in the pre-Taliban Afghanistan political scene with strong links to Iran.
This passed by a proclaimed aim of separating the Talib foot soldier- the so-called "ten-dollar Talib" - from his leadership and the "reintegration and reconciliation process" that eventually led to the Bonn conference in late 2011 and the opening of the informal "Embassy" of the Taliban in Doha. This passed as well by the less publicised but most telling integration in the Afghan government of prominent figures linked with the Hezb-i-Islami and the progressive implementation of Taliban style policy in the country, namely against women rights.
As we are approaching a new important moment in the international community discussions on the future of Afghanistan - centred now in Chicago - the appeasing policy failure seems all too obvious to be possible to continue to hide.
While the Taliban compensated their low esteem among the Afghani population by important gains in the institutional talibanisation of the country as well as by dramatic diplomatic gains resulting from their international recognition, they did not move a jota from their most important tactical objective: to insure the kicking off of the international community out of Afghanistan, a fundamental step to resume their role as reference hosts of the international fanatic movement.
Western appeasement attitude towards religious fanaticism is deeply rooted in time and history and even predate the oil era. Nonetheless, it is remarkable how it led a country that had achieved such a high level of openness in the end of the sixties like Afghanistan to be transformed in the international headquarters of the most extreme form of religious fanaticism less than thirty years onwards.
Afghanistan tried for a long time to keep apart from being swallowed into major international disputes, but by the end of the sixties it became a major playground between the waning communist influence of the Soviet Union and the growing influence of its other neighbours.
Based on the so-called "political realism school" the West did not only decide to oppose Soviet Union, but decided as well to support uncritically whoever opposed Soviet Union, including the most extreme forms of terrorist warfare and religious fanaticism supported by neighbouring Muslim states and some more distant ones.
The result was devastating: a striving and modernising society was utterly destroyed and submitted to the barbarian rule of military warlords supported by foreign powers and mostly exercising their power in the name of an extreme, fanatic reading of Islam.
The success of this early "Jihad" against the Soviet Union had also tremendous effects on the whole of the countries that engaged in supporting it, an impact that goes much further than Bin Laden. Other than the generation of "Afghani Arabs" that like Bin Laden spread terrorism and fanaticism all over the World, it paved the way to the Zia ul-Haq Islamic transformation of Pakistan and to the takeover by a new theocratic regime in Iran.
In spite of the linear and obvious connection between the Islamist appeasement policy of the West and the September eleven, the West was (and remains) in a state of denial on this reality, and soon called the help of the very same powers and logic responsible for the Taliban drama to supposedly finishing it.
As much as the Western leaders spent all their time and energies trying to spot the "ten dollar Talib", the "moderate" fanatic and a miraculous reversal of attitudes from those who put the fanatic logic moving, they could never spare time to listen to the real independent civil society and women in the countries victims of fanaticism.
In Bonn 2011, the international community made the impossible to accommodate the wishes of the Taliban and its most important state sponsor to be only confronted with their refusal to participate.
As regards the next NATO summit to be held on the 20th and the 21st of May, Pakistan announced once again its withdrawal from the proceedings, now in protest against a military strike in Northern Waziristan that allegedly killed three Taliban.
This could be the opportunity for the West finally to start hearing others than those who have the power of guns and poppies, starting by Afghani women.
Massouda Jalal, again Presidential candidate, former minister of women affairs, former psychiatrist till she became redundant as the whole country became a sort of lunatic asylum, prisoner under the Taliban and a paediatric doctor is the woman I think NATO leaders should now hear.
Contrarily to others that were selected only for their capacity to parrot the voice of their masters, Massouda Jalal speaks her own rich and informed mind. I had the honour of working and learning a lot with Doctor Jalal.
I think she is indispensable to hear if we are seriously thinking to interrupt the self-defeating logic of the past and to give Afghanis the very same civil liberties rights we took for granted in our own countries.