Afghanistan: Peace Without "Winning" Is Still A Win

By Steve Hynd

Just about everyone trots out the obvious on Afghanistan: that there's no military path to "winning" there. And just about everyone except the die-hard Fighting Keyboardists realises by now that insurgencies only end when you either do massive ethnic cleansing - removing Mao's "sea of support" - or come to an accomodation with the insurgents. So, given that the US and it's allies aren't about to go all Sri Lankan on the Pashtuns' asses, the only way out of Afghanistan is reconcilliation - talking to terrorists about peace - right? Right.

Apparently, the Obama administration and its allies have finally grasped this basic formula. From Newsweek's team of John Barry, Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau:

�There was a major policy shift that went completely unreported in the last three months,� a senior administration official tells NEWSWEEK, asking not to be named speaking on sensitive issues. �We�re going to support Afghan-led reconciliation [with the Taliban].� U.S. officials have quietly dropped the Bush administration�s resistance to talks with senior Taliban and are doing whatever they can to help Karzai open talks with the insurgents, although they still say any Taliban willing to negotiate must renounce violence, reject Al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution. (Some observers predict that those preconditions may eventually be fudged into goals.)

...the uproar attending McChrystal�s departure means that, as a NATO envoy in Washington says, asking not to be named on a touchy subject: �The need to do something more in Afghanistan is now firmly on the Washington agenda.� That means persuading the Taliban to talk peace if at all possible, regardless of which side has the upper hand now. �Waiting for the perfect security situation is like having a baby,� says another Western diplomat, likewise unwilling to be identified. �There�s never a right time.�

...The problem, as the military adage goes, is that in war the enemy gets to vote on any plan. And the Taliban may not be bluffing when they say that they�re not interested in talks with Karzai or anyone else. Senior Taliban members scoff at talk of the 1267 list. �Karzai is saying, �We will get you off the blacklist,�?� the former minister says. �But we don�t care. We don�t have bank accounts, and we only travel between Afghanistan and Pakistan, sometimes in cars, sometimes on donkeys. We don�t need passports or U.N. authorization for that.� The ad-ministration needs to show some sort of progress by the end of the year to forestall calls for a real pullout. The Taliban say they�re prepared to hold out far longer than that for victory.

And that's really the rub, isn't it? Will the Taliban want to talk or will they decide - as pro-war boosters would have it - that they can outwait NATO then be in power in Kabul within a month?

Well, a think-tank friend points out that he's seen no serious examination of what is likely to happen if NATO withdraws. There's a lot of loose talk about a swift Taliban take over followed by the inevitable return of Al Qaeda but there's no study taking into account military capabilities as well as demographics, loyalty, motivation, possible comparisons with the slow takeover which took place after the Soviets withdrew etc. The absence of such a study may itself be significant. Last time, it took the Taliban six years to seize Kabul. This time they'd be up against a semi-established central government and US-equipped Northern militias probably supported from "over the horizon" by US firepower?  It begins to sound somewhat like the loose talk of Sunni insurgents taking over Iraq if the US withdrew which was all the rage among pro-war pundits in 2003-07, which anyone who'd spent even a little time getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of the various factions knew was rubbish.

But there is a study by Talatbek Masadykov,  Antonio Giustozzi, and James Michael Page for the Crisis States Research Centre this year (PDF) which suggests that the Taliban might be more amenable to negotiation than many think. It notes that:

In spite of the difficult circumstances within Afghanistan and those that have been imposed upon the country and its people, the role of reconciliation has always provided a successful means - and an accepted method - for the settling of conflict. Indeed reconciliation has been a central feature of both social practices and social norms of the peoples of Afghanistan, often replacing the use of force. This has been the case locally, regionally and internationally. The Pashtun tribes along the border have a long history of well-developed religious, social and tribal structures, including their own governance and methods of resolving disputes.

And backs the idea that the UN should be the main route for reconcilliation talks - something that had been raised by Taliban representatives themselves in 2003 and again in 2006:

In 2006, meetings started again with representatives of anti-government elements, upon their request, including the Taliban. UNAMA political affairs officers held these meetings with the view to understanding the position of these groups and representatives, and informed the Afghan government. According to anti-government elements and their representatives, these meetings with UNAMA were called and held because they are, in their view, unable to speak directly with the Afghan government because it is too weak. They also do not trust the international military forces, as they are targeting them. This is why UNAMA is the only relatively credible organisation that can be approached by them in Afghanistan. Recent attempts by the Afghan government, started in 2008, to talk directly to the Taliban through Qauym Karzai, President Karzai�s elder brother, created the misperception among Afghans that this was not a transparent government programme towards reconciliation, but rather a process driven by family interests. Although Qayum Karzai certainly had good intentions to help to bring about peace, it would perhaps have been more useful if the Afghan government had officially selected someone to lead this initiative.

As to other key nations that should be involved - the study found that Pakistan is very much pro-reconcilliation but also that it is still "quite consistent in supporting Taliban groups operating in Afghanistan" while Saudi Arabia:

has been under steadily growing pressure to expand its relations with Kabul, rather than implicitly supporting Pakistan�s agenda there. Saudi Arabia, like Pakistan, favours reconciliation, but unlike Pakistan has fewer national interests at stake in the success of such an initiative. According to Taliban sources, the Saudis have close relations with them. The Taliban trust them more than other countries and therefore would prefer to have the Saudis as one of the parties involved, if reconciliation talks were to commence. Saudi Arabia is not willing to be perceived as being supportive of the Taliban, however in reality they can influence the Taliban when necessary.

The report ends by cautioning that "it could be very dangerous to wait for the conflict to be exhausted before, or indeed prior to, starting negotiations."

If the Taliban are indeed willing to enter into negotiations right now, then this may be a significant "tell":

Armed attacks on non-governmental organisations and humanitarian agencies working in Afghanistan have lessened over the past six months, not only because of their own security measures, but also because the Taliban have stopped targeting them, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO).

While some 1,200 security incidents were recorded in June 2010 -- more than in any month since the fall of the Taliban -- assaults on NGOs by armed opposition groups in the first half of 2010 were 35 percent lower than in 2008-2009, says ANSO, which provides free safety analysis and advice to member NGOs.

�At a strategic level the armed opposition are in many cases acting more like a government in waiting and so see a convergence of interests in maintaining NGO services. However, it is still possible for mistakes to be made at the tactical level and for an NGO to become targeted,� Nic Lee, director of ANSO.

If the Taliban, behind their talk of outwaiting occupying Western troops, have already done their own calculations about the chances of their taking over all of Afghanistan again - and come up short - then negotiations are available now and any delay is just causing death to no good purpose. That's pure speculation, to be sure, but without detailled studies of what the West thinks might happen should it negotiate a peace and withdraw then so are the doom-and-gloom warnings of the pro-war lobby. Peace without "winning" would still be a win...for everybody.