Afghanistan And Lessons Learned From Northern Ireland

By Steve Hynd

Over at FDL's "Seminal" division, MarkfromIreland has some thoughts on how the peace process in Northern Ireland relates to a possible future outcome in Afghanistan. Worth reading because a) the UK government is explicitly pushing a N.I. style reconcilliation as an exit ramp for the West from the intractable Afghan occupation and b) Mark was, by his own admission, "a go-between between various armed groups in Ireland during the peace process negotiations."

Mark writes that various armed insurgencies across the Middle East and beyond are remarkably well informed about and interested in the N.I. process that brought an eventual end to "The Troubles". And his "lessons learned" include the unpleasant fact that violence works.

The lesson that has been learnt amongst many in the Middle East who have studied "the lessons of Northern Ireland"  is that it is folly to lay down your arms until you have secured both your continued survival and many of your objectives.

... I should add that �the lesson of Northern Ireland� is that for any peace process to work all parties to the negotiations have to accept that maximalist goals cannot ever be achieved. �Maximalist goals� goals are goals that take no account of the concerns and the historical narrative of your opponents. For as long as any of the parties to a conflict retain maximalist goals the cycle of bloodshed will continue. It may be punctuated by quite long periods of relative calm but the cycle itself will continue.

Reaching a sustainable peace agreement is tricky because to reach it all sides must first accept that nobody can achieve all of their goals but everybody needs to feel, and be able to convince their followers, that some of their goals have been achieved. That �this is a deal we can live with�. The Irish experience is an example of one such �deal we can live with� leading to sustainable peace agreement, the South African one is another.

This is what "Sun Myung Moon neocons" like Arnaud De Borchgrave don't get. De Borchgrave writes for the New Atlanticist today that the Taiban are an "unflippable enemy" and continues: "cajoling a few Taliban 'reconcilable' foot soldiers to abandon the fight and rally to NATO's side will not flip anything. "

Well no, of course it won't. But that shouldn't be the point of negotiation efforts. The point should be to flip those reconcilables to a position of negotiation for peace with the Kabul government - as part of which deal-making NATO troops should be leaving. Let Afghans sort out their own internal problems in their own sovereign way. Meanwhile, Rory Stewart sets out a method whereby Western national security interests can be accomodated without a massive occupying footprint.