This analysis was published five days before the Koran burning incident at Bagram Airfield, which touched off widespread rioting in Afghanistan and 'green on blue' murders in the ANSF.
A grim future for Afghanistan
Amin Saikal
February 15, 2012
ABC (Australia), The Drum Opinon
The United States has announced that it intends to withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan a year earlier than it had originally declared. This is in sync with an earlier French pullout, but confusing for the Afghan government and music to the ears of the Taliban and their supporters.Meanwhile, a leaked secret NATO report has presented a very grim picture of the situation in Afghanistan. It clearly establishes the links between Pakistan's notorious military intelligence, the ISI, and points to the Taliban's growing strength and alludes to the militia's ability to regain power. The report makes very uncomfortable reading for the Karzai government and Washington. Yet these are not altogether new revelations.
It is a presidential election year in the US. President Barack Obama wishes to be seen as having fulfilled his pre-election promise to end America's involvement in the trillion-dollar wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. An indication of an early withdrawal from Afghanistan could also mean that Washington is preparing for a military showdown with Iran over the country's nuclear program, as the US remains conscious of not allowing too many American troops to become Iran's target in Afghanistan.
As for the NATO secret report, it essentially confirms what some Afghanistan specialists (including myself) have repeatedly been saying: Pakistan's notorious military intelligence service, ISI, continues to leverage the Taliban and their affiliates, the so-called Haqqani network, with a clear aim of securing a receptive government in Kabul in the wake of the US-led NATO troop withdrawal.
It also reinforces the view that the Taliban, as fractured as they may be, are doing a lot better than the Karzai government in winning over an increasing number of the Afghan people, especially among the ethnic Pashtuns, who form about 42 per cent of the Afghan population, with even some of the people within the Karzai government ready to jump ship. This is for a number of reasons. Chief among them are three.
First of all the Karzai government has remained extremely weak, dysfunctional, corrupt and untrustworthy. Most Afghans do not know what it precisely stands for: is it a perverted form of a politically pluralist Afghanistan with an Islamic face, with which most Afghans cannot identify, or a kind of tribalised authoritarian Muslim Afghanistan, with some distorted democratic trappings, which have proved to be very confusing to most Afghans?
As for the Taliban's stance, it is easily discernable by the mostly illiterate, conservative Muslim Afghan population: defence of Islam, country and honour.
Secondly, the US and its allies have pursued a strategy that has been inappropriate for Afghanistan's conditions. The shift from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency under president Obama has been more in name than substance.
In the absence of a credible Afghan partner on the ground, no strategy can achieve its objectives. The US and its allies have certainly sunk a lot of money and energy into building the Afghan National Army and Police Force.
It all looks good in terms of numbers, but their ability to grow as coherent national forces able to take over security operations from foreign troops is highly doubtful. They remain very much captive of the dynamics of the mosaic nature of the Afghan society, with little or no identification with a central government for which they could fight.
Besides which, like the Karzai administration (if one can call it an administration), they are penetrated, at all levels, by the Taliban as well as an array of foreign intelligence services, most importantly the ISI.
Thirdly, there is no regional consensus on Afghanistan. The US and its allies have not given this a top priority, largely due to US-Iranian hostilities and an American inability to rein in the Pakistani military/ISI.
As long as these factors remain in place, the Taliban and their Pakistani backers have good reason to remain hopeful about their chances of succeeding in the end, but a Taliban takeover of power also carries the serious risk of non-Pashtun Afghan population clusters taking up arms once again to defend themselves, with Iran, India and Russia providing support. This would be a development that could plunge Afghanistan into a wider bloody conflict.
The Taliban and their Pakistani patrons are aware of this, and this is a challenge that they may try to address by enticing Karzai and some of his ministers, who are more keen to protect their interests than those of Afghanistan, to join them.In this, the 10,000-20,000 troops that the US may leave behind to man a few bases in Afghanistan for 'above the horizon' operations until 2024 may prove to be of little use in saving what Washington claims to be the momentum of stability in Afghanistan.
Amin Saikal is professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the ANU. A new edition of his book Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival will be published in April. View his full profile here.
Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
"Killing is the art of the Taliban"
"Recently Afghan government expressed it's agreement to transfer of Taliban prisoners to Qatar to join their families. It came as Pakistani media reported that the talks between the US and the Taliban have ended without result."
Taliban are Terrorists and the Murderers of Afghan People: Spanta
Tolo TV
February 13, 2012
National Security Advisor to President Karzai, in an Exclusive Interview with TOLOnews, said that Taliban are the murderers of Afghan people and are servants of foreigners.
Mr Spanta said one should not expect humane behaviour from the Taliban.
He said if government tries to bring Taliban to power, he will feel ashamed to being part of it.
Killing is the art of the Taliban and if anyone calls Taliban leaders as "heroes", will be a traitor and enemy of Afghanistan, Mr Spanta continued.
Taliban's aim is to impose medieval culture on contemporary era.
"If government tries to bring Taliban into power and ignore our achievements, I want to say from now that I am feel ashamed before history," Mr Spanta said.
He emphasised that Afghan government should not lose the war it's winning, with Taliban's propaganda.
Mr Spanta believes that the Taliban can be considered the main problem for Afghanistan in the last 10 years.
He called Hezbe Islami an easy party to talk to, but said that government should talk with main players of the Afghan crisis.
He called Taliban's Qatar office only an address to the militant group, and not a political office.
"This office is only an address for talking to the Taliban, and it can in no way be seen as recognition of the Taliban," he added.
He called corruption a major challenge ahead of the Afghan government. Existence of corruption has paved the way for the enemies of Afghanistan to misuse it.
He once again emphasised on Afghan-owned Peace process and said Afghanistan will not sacrifice the past achievements.
The statements come as Afghan government recently agreed to establishment of Taliban's Qatar office.
The Taliban group has also shown its readiness for talks with the US government and it's Western allies.
Release of Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay prison has been Taliban main pre-condition for talks.
Recently Afghan government expressed it's agreement to transfer of Taliban prisoners to Qatar to join their families.
It came as Pakistani media reported that the talks between the US and the Taliban have ended without result.
Taliban are Terrorists and the Murderers of Afghan People: Spanta
Tolo TV
February 13, 2012
National Security Advisor to President Karzai, in an Exclusive Interview with TOLOnews, said that Taliban are the murderers of Afghan people and are servants of foreigners.
Mr Spanta said one should not expect humane behaviour from the Taliban.
He said if government tries to bring Taliban to power, he will feel ashamed to being part of it.
Killing is the art of the Taliban and if anyone calls Taliban leaders as "heroes", will be a traitor and enemy of Afghanistan, Mr Spanta continued.
Taliban's aim is to impose medieval culture on contemporary era.
"If government tries to bring Taliban into power and ignore our achievements, I want to say from now that I am feel ashamed before history," Mr Spanta said.
He emphasised that Afghan government should not lose the war it's winning, with Taliban's propaganda.
Mr Spanta believes that the Taliban can be considered the main problem for Afghanistan in the last 10 years.
He called Hezbe Islami an easy party to talk to, but said that government should talk with main players of the Afghan crisis.
He called Taliban's Qatar office only an address to the militant group, and not a political office.
"This office is only an address for talking to the Taliban, and it can in no way be seen as recognition of the Taliban," he added.
He called corruption a major challenge ahead of the Afghan government. Existence of corruption has paved the way for the enemies of Afghanistan to misuse it.
He once again emphasised on Afghan-owned Peace process and said Afghanistan will not sacrifice the past achievements.
The statements come as Afghan government recently agreed to establishment of Taliban's Qatar office.
The Taliban group has also shown its readiness for talks with the US government and it's Western allies.
Release of Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay prison has been Taliban main pre-condition for talks.
Recently Afghan government expressed it's agreement to transfer of Taliban prisoners to Qatar to join their families.
It came as Pakistani media reported that the talks between the US and the Taliban have ended without result.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Social media flummox Taliban in Afghanistan
Military comeback a distant dream for Afghan Taliban
By Rob Taylor
February 6, 2012
Reuters
KABUL - A secret NATO report ["The State of the Taliban" -- leaked to the BBC and Times on February 1, 2012] showing the strength of confidence among the Afghan Taliban is raising concerns from Kabul to Washington that the militant group might overrun the country again when foreign combat forces finally leave.
But analysts doubt the militants, who rose from the ashes of Afghanistan's civil war, will be able to again race into the capital in pick-up trucks, hang their opponents in public and once more impose their austere brand of Islam on the country.
Although still much feared, experts say they don't have the military capability to seize control of the whole country when NATO combat troops withdraw in 2014.
Despite the bold predictions of Taliban detainees whose opinions formed the basis of the NATO report, which was leaked last week, circumstances have changed substantially. A partial comeback appears to be the best the Taliban can hope for.
"When they ruled before, many people had fled Afghanistan. There was no young generation. Without much fighting, they captured 90 percent of Afghanistan. But now the situation has completely changed," said Waheed Mujhda, Kabul-based expert on the Taliban.
"They accept that the time has changed. They accept that it's impossible for one party to capture all Afghanistan and rule all over Afghanistan."
The Taliban, ousted after a U.S. invasion in 2001, was able to sweep to power in 1995 partly because it was able to exploit the chaos gripping Afghanistan in the years following the end of the failed Soviet occupation.
DIFFICULT TO TOPPLE GOVERNMENT
The Afghan army and security forces may still be deeply flawed, but their mere size would make it difficult for the Taliban to simply topple the government when NATO troops go.
With an estimated 25,000 fighters at the most, the Taliban is hugely outnumbered by NATO and Afghan forces.
Its budget too is miniscule, put at just $150 million a year. By contrast, the United States has spent some $500 billion on its 10-year war there.
"The government is very fragile but we have to keep in mind it is supported by a 250,000 strong security apparatus ... which is also supported by the international community and these two big elements were missing when the Taliban seized the country in the mid-90s," said Pakistani security analyst Imtiaz Gul.
Without tanks and fighter planes, the Taliban could find itself battling government forces -- and remaining Western special forces - for years.
And a survey by The Asia Foundation showed that the proportion of respondents who say they had some level of sympathy with the motives of armed opposition groups reached its lowest level last year.
Also standing in the way would be the threat of a renewed civil war from the Taliban's old ethnic foes, a small army of Western advisors likely to remain after 2014, and the opposition of many ordinary Afghans.
A surge in U.S. and NATO troop numbers that began in 2010 has suppressed the Taliban on the open battlefield, forcing the insurgency last year to turn to assassinations and high-profile attacks in Kabul to regain a psychological advantage.
Taliban commanders still speak of waging jihad until Islamic rule is restored. But some militants are starting to long for a peaceful end to Afghanistan's years of conflict.
"There are fighters who had suffered losses, lost their family members in fighting and became homeless who want a peaceful solution to the long war," said a Taliban commander who identified himself by his codename Qari Baryal.
In a surprise announcement last month, the Afghan Taliban announced it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to negotiate -- for government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
That also suggests it thinks the odds of a complete takeover are slim and is instead looking for major gains in the political arena.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said it was too soon to say how political maneuvers towards peace negotiations could unfold, although the Taliban was open to conciliation.
But there are questions over how cohesive the Taliban can remain.
Ghulam Jelani Zwak, director of Afghan Analytical and Advisory Centre, said he believes peace talks and the NATO withdrawal will lead to the break up of the Taliban between more extreme insurgents and those willing to accept a peace deal.
"But there is no open sign of disaffection in the Taliban, and so we can only guess at that," he said.
MEDIEVAL JUSTICE
The Taliban's medieval justice and punishment system -- including hangings, oppression of women and amputating the limbs of thieves -- was initially accepted by Afghans because it brought security and an end to a period of chaotic warlord rule.
Today, many Afghans have grown accustomed to improved access for women to education and work, and an economy in which growth has averaged 9.1 percent. Foreign investment has climbed sharply from zero in Taliban days to a peak of $300 million in 2008.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are catching on among young Afghans, providing a forum for users to criticize the government and the Taliban.
Kamran Bokhari, a South Asia expert at global intelligence firm STRATFOR, said the Taliban had become interested in a political solution over fighting because it needed both a withdrawal of foreign troops and international acceptance of a more moderate face to take part in eventual power sharing.
For those still fighting against Taliban militants, they remain a formidable foe. They have proven resilient in the face of American-led NATO firepower during the war, outsmarting the best U.S. military minds through the use of homemade bombs, sophisticated high-profile attacks and political savvy.
At remote Afghan army posts, soldiers like Nassem Gul doubt their own ability to repel the Taliban that has kept NATO at bay for over a decade.
"When the Taliban try to overrun our post, we think first to call NATO air support. If there is no air support it is very difficult to fight and even hold this post," said Gul, complaining he needs heavier weapons than his AK-47 rifle.
(Additional reporting by Serena Chaudhry in ISLAMABAD and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, Editing by Michael Georgy and Jonathan Thatcher)
By Rob Taylor
February 6, 2012
Reuters
KABUL - A secret NATO report ["The State of the Taliban" -- leaked to the BBC and Times on February 1, 2012] showing the strength of confidence among the Afghan Taliban is raising concerns from Kabul to Washington that the militant group might overrun the country again when foreign combat forces finally leave.
But analysts doubt the militants, who rose from the ashes of Afghanistan's civil war, will be able to again race into the capital in pick-up trucks, hang their opponents in public and once more impose their austere brand of Islam on the country.
Although still much feared, experts say they don't have the military capability to seize control of the whole country when NATO combat troops withdraw in 2014.
Despite the bold predictions of Taliban detainees whose opinions formed the basis of the NATO report, which was leaked last week, circumstances have changed substantially. A partial comeback appears to be the best the Taliban can hope for.
"When they ruled before, many people had fled Afghanistan. There was no young generation. Without much fighting, they captured 90 percent of Afghanistan. But now the situation has completely changed," said Waheed Mujhda, Kabul-based expert on the Taliban.
"They accept that the time has changed. They accept that it's impossible for one party to capture all Afghanistan and rule all over Afghanistan."
The Taliban, ousted after a U.S. invasion in 2001, was able to sweep to power in 1995 partly because it was able to exploit the chaos gripping Afghanistan in the years following the end of the failed Soviet occupation.
DIFFICULT TO TOPPLE GOVERNMENT
The Afghan army and security forces may still be deeply flawed, but their mere size would make it difficult for the Taliban to simply topple the government when NATO troops go.
With an estimated 25,000 fighters at the most, the Taliban is hugely outnumbered by NATO and Afghan forces.
Its budget too is miniscule, put at just $150 million a year. By contrast, the United States has spent some $500 billion on its 10-year war there.
"The government is very fragile but we have to keep in mind it is supported by a 250,000 strong security apparatus ... which is also supported by the international community and these two big elements were missing when the Taliban seized the country in the mid-90s," said Pakistani security analyst Imtiaz Gul.
Without tanks and fighter planes, the Taliban could find itself battling government forces -- and remaining Western special forces - for years.
And a survey by The Asia Foundation showed that the proportion of respondents who say they had some level of sympathy with the motives of armed opposition groups reached its lowest level last year.
Also standing in the way would be the threat of a renewed civil war from the Taliban's old ethnic foes, a small army of Western advisors likely to remain after 2014, and the opposition of many ordinary Afghans.
A surge in U.S. and NATO troop numbers that began in 2010 has suppressed the Taliban on the open battlefield, forcing the insurgency last year to turn to assassinations and high-profile attacks in Kabul to regain a psychological advantage.
Taliban commanders still speak of waging jihad until Islamic rule is restored. But some militants are starting to long for a peaceful end to Afghanistan's years of conflict.
"There are fighters who had suffered losses, lost their family members in fighting and became homeless who want a peaceful solution to the long war," said a Taliban commander who identified himself by his codename Qari Baryal.
In a surprise announcement last month, the Afghan Taliban announced it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to negotiate -- for government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
That also suggests it thinks the odds of a complete takeover are slim and is instead looking for major gains in the political arena.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said it was too soon to say how political maneuvers towards peace negotiations could unfold, although the Taliban was open to conciliation.
But there are questions over how cohesive the Taliban can remain.
Ghulam Jelani Zwak, director of Afghan Analytical and Advisory Centre, said he believes peace talks and the NATO withdrawal will lead to the break up of the Taliban between more extreme insurgents and those willing to accept a peace deal.
"But there is no open sign of disaffection in the Taliban, and so we can only guess at that," he said.
MEDIEVAL JUSTICE
The Taliban's medieval justice and punishment system -- including hangings, oppression of women and amputating the limbs of thieves -- was initially accepted by Afghans because it brought security and an end to a period of chaotic warlord rule.
Today, many Afghans have grown accustomed to improved access for women to education and work, and an economy in which growth has averaged 9.1 percent. Foreign investment has climbed sharply from zero in Taliban days to a peak of $300 million in 2008.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are catching on among young Afghans, providing a forum for users to criticize the government and the Taliban.
Kamran Bokhari, a South Asia expert at global intelligence firm STRATFOR, said the Taliban had become interested in a political solution over fighting because it needed both a withdrawal of foreign troops and international acceptance of a more moderate face to take part in eventual power sharing.
For those still fighting against Taliban militants, they remain a formidable foe. They have proven resilient in the face of American-led NATO firepower during the war, outsmarting the best U.S. military minds through the use of homemade bombs, sophisticated high-profile attacks and political savvy.
At remote Afghan army posts, soldiers like Nassem Gul doubt their own ability to repel the Taliban that has kept NATO at bay for over a decade.
"When the Taliban try to overrun our post, we think first to call NATO air support. If there is no air support it is very difficult to fight and even hold this post," said Gul, complaining he needs heavier weapons than his AK-47 rifle.
(Additional reporting by Serena Chaudhry in ISLAMABAD and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, Editing by Michael Georgy and Jonathan Thatcher)
Saturday, June 18, 2011
"First, Take Nuristan: The Taliban's New Afghan Plan"
First, Take Nuristan: The Taliban's New Afghan Plan
By Julius Cavendish
June 1, 2011
TIME magazine
Jalalabad - Every morning at 8 a.m., Maulawi Zahir heads into Waygal district center, a remote mountain village of stone houses stacked almost vertically up granite slopes. As the undeniable man in charge of the Afghan village, the Taliban leader is there to hear and settle disputes. But despite his group's ascendancy, he struggles to burnish his credentials among his constituents, even in an area where loathing for NATO and the Afghan government runs deep. "People aren't happy, but they pretend to be," says one local trader. "They dislike the Taliban as much as they dislike government."
Zahir's attempt at daily dispute resolution is important in one respect: for the first time in almost a decade the Taliban are administering an Afghan district unmolested. In fact, Waygal has been almost completely abandoned by NATO for the past three years. For the insurgents — and their non-Afghan militant allies from Pakistan and Arabic-speaking countries — it is the most visible step in a longer term strategy to turn Nuristan, itself virtually given up by the alliance since 2009, into a militant hub and a staging post for attacks on strategic targets, including the capital Kabul.
Still, it is hard going for the Taliban. Local commanders don't exactly have the same agendas as the foreign fighters with visions of global jihad. Elsewhere in the province, on occasions when the militants have massed, Afghan government commandos and their U.S. mentors have scrambled from bases lower down the valleys to disperse them. Last Wednesday, as Taliban fighters attempted to storm Du Ab district center in Nuristan's west, U.S. warplanes killed more than 100 in a series of bombing runs, reportedly including civilians and a convoy of Afghan police. After NATO bombs killed several children in southern Helmand province on Sunday, President Hamid Karzai complained loudly. NATO apologized for the civilian casualties. Karzai has yet to comment on the Du Ab strike although his government has been broadly supportive of the Nuristan campaign, with the Interior Ministry promising to reclaim areas lost to the Taliban.
NATO is quick to point out that the sustained fighting in Nuristan is a testament to the toughness of the Afghan police on the front lines. That is undoubtedly true, but it misses the point that the Taliban attacks are part of a rolling effort to drive the government out of Nuristan altogether. The Taliban has three objectives in mind: to take Nuristan; storm Asadabad, capital of neighboring Kunar province; and undermine NATO's plans to hand a third territory, Laghman province, over to the Afghan government.
"The number of attacks has been shooting up," says a Western security analyst. "Bases are getting smashed, there are [illegal] checkpoints on the road every day." On May 1, when the Taliban announced their nearly nationwide spring campaign, Asadabad bore the brunt of the assault: three mortar attacks on a U.S. base in 36 hours and assaults on the prison and police headquarters, in what may well have been a hint of things to come.
Indeed, history is not on NATO's side. The 1978 uprising by landowners and clerics, which led to civil war, the virtual collapse of the government and ultimately the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, began in eastern Nuristan and spread quickly to Kunar. "Trouble here can break the central government," said Qari Ziaur Rahman, a regional commander for the Taliban who is also a leader of the Punjab-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, in a 2008 interview. "Whoever has been defeated in Afghanistan, his defeat began from Kunar." Whether the Taliban and their allies can pull off a successful assault on Asadabad is questionable, but there seems little doubt they'll try. For its part, NATO has redeployed troops to the valley linking Waygal with Asadabad in what looks like an attempt to lock the door.
But the Taliban and their allies have "a very definite plan" to launch attacks in neighboring Laghman province, Western security analysts say. There, NATO is already handing over security of the provincial capital Mehterlam to Afghan forces, and the rest of the province is expected to follow suit next year. If the Taliban can seize Nuristan's western fringes, they'll have a free run from the Pakistani border all the way to Laghman, where provincial officials are already said to be glancing nervously at their unruly neighbor.
There is, it's true, a sense that many local Taliban fighters in Nuristan want nothing more than to remain in splendid isolation. But with "most of the authority and the decisionmaking" in the hands of the foreign fighters operating in the region, according to Fabrizio Foschini of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a Kabul think tank, there are grander agendas afoot. While the withdrawal of U.S. troops has dampened the insurgency in some respects, it has also given the hodgepodge of global jihadist groups in the region freer rein.
According to one Afghan official, members of the Pakistani Taliban, Jaish-e-Mohammed and other groups alien to Afghanistan are regularly present in Nuristan. Western diplomats say that links between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda are stronger in Nuristan and Kunar than anywhere else in the country — and that Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmir Islamist militant group backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, is a growing presence. The group is blamed for the massacre of a party of aid workers in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, next door to Nuristan, in 2010.
Earlier in May, an explosion rocked a house in the Nuristani village of Chatras, killing two Arab fighters thought to belong to al-Qaeda, two retired Pakistani soldiers, three local Talibs — and the 12-year-old boy they were drilling in the craft of suicide bombing. "After the instruction, they fitted the jacket on him," the Afghan official told TIME, "And he said, 'O.K., should I walk like this?' 'Yes, yes.' 'And I should press this button?' And he pressed the button and exploded."
The influx has brought its own problems, with clashes between local Taliban commanders and die-hard outsiders. In a stark illustration of the tension, a Lashkar-e-Taiba commander called Maulawi Ahmad last winter ambushed the shadow governor of Nuristan, Jamil Rahman, who is Zahir's boss. Rahman had publicly upbraided Ahmad for kidnapping engineers working on a road that would improve life for local communities. Ahmad's men reportedly beat Rahman with sticks until they broke his arm. Many foreign militants flowing into Nuristan continue to see such foreign aid projects as legitimate targets.
It remains to be seen whether these interlopers from Pakistan will have better luck taming Nuristan's wild valleys than NATO has. But even if they're unsuccessful, the situation — a weak government under siege by local insurgents and tensions deepening between the region's myriad factions and strongmen — offers a sobering picture of what the rest of Afghanistan could look like when NATO leaves.
By Julius Cavendish
June 1, 2011
TIME magazine
Jalalabad - Every morning at 8 a.m., Maulawi Zahir heads into Waygal district center, a remote mountain village of stone houses stacked almost vertically up granite slopes. As the undeniable man in charge of the Afghan village, the Taliban leader is there to hear and settle disputes. But despite his group's ascendancy, he struggles to burnish his credentials among his constituents, even in an area where loathing for NATO and the Afghan government runs deep. "People aren't happy, but they pretend to be," says one local trader. "They dislike the Taliban as much as they dislike government."
Zahir's attempt at daily dispute resolution is important in one respect: for the first time in almost a decade the Taliban are administering an Afghan district unmolested. In fact, Waygal has been almost completely abandoned by NATO for the past three years. For the insurgents — and their non-Afghan militant allies from Pakistan and Arabic-speaking countries — it is the most visible step in a longer term strategy to turn Nuristan, itself virtually given up by the alliance since 2009, into a militant hub and a staging post for attacks on strategic targets, including the capital Kabul.
Still, it is hard going for the Taliban. Local commanders don't exactly have the same agendas as the foreign fighters with visions of global jihad. Elsewhere in the province, on occasions when the militants have massed, Afghan government commandos and their U.S. mentors have scrambled from bases lower down the valleys to disperse them. Last Wednesday, as Taliban fighters attempted to storm Du Ab district center in Nuristan's west, U.S. warplanes killed more than 100 in a series of bombing runs, reportedly including civilians and a convoy of Afghan police. After NATO bombs killed several children in southern Helmand province on Sunday, President Hamid Karzai complained loudly. NATO apologized for the civilian casualties. Karzai has yet to comment on the Du Ab strike although his government has been broadly supportive of the Nuristan campaign, with the Interior Ministry promising to reclaim areas lost to the Taliban.
NATO is quick to point out that the sustained fighting in Nuristan is a testament to the toughness of the Afghan police on the front lines. That is undoubtedly true, but it misses the point that the Taliban attacks are part of a rolling effort to drive the government out of Nuristan altogether. The Taliban has three objectives in mind: to take Nuristan; storm Asadabad, capital of neighboring Kunar province; and undermine NATO's plans to hand a third territory, Laghman province, over to the Afghan government.
"The number of attacks has been shooting up," says a Western security analyst. "Bases are getting smashed, there are [illegal] checkpoints on the road every day." On May 1, when the Taliban announced their nearly nationwide spring campaign, Asadabad bore the brunt of the assault: three mortar attacks on a U.S. base in 36 hours and assaults on the prison and police headquarters, in what may well have been a hint of things to come.
Indeed, history is not on NATO's side. The 1978 uprising by landowners and clerics, which led to civil war, the virtual collapse of the government and ultimately the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, began in eastern Nuristan and spread quickly to Kunar. "Trouble here can break the central government," said Qari Ziaur Rahman, a regional commander for the Taliban who is also a leader of the Punjab-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, in a 2008 interview. "Whoever has been defeated in Afghanistan, his defeat began from Kunar." Whether the Taliban and their allies can pull off a successful assault on Asadabad is questionable, but there seems little doubt they'll try. For its part, NATO has redeployed troops to the valley linking Waygal with Asadabad in what looks like an attempt to lock the door.
But the Taliban and their allies have "a very definite plan" to launch attacks in neighboring Laghman province, Western security analysts say. There, NATO is already handing over security of the provincial capital Mehterlam to Afghan forces, and the rest of the province is expected to follow suit next year. If the Taliban can seize Nuristan's western fringes, they'll have a free run from the Pakistani border all the way to Laghman, where provincial officials are already said to be glancing nervously at their unruly neighbor.
There is, it's true, a sense that many local Taliban fighters in Nuristan want nothing more than to remain in splendid isolation. But with "most of the authority and the decisionmaking" in the hands of the foreign fighters operating in the region, according to Fabrizio Foschini of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a Kabul think tank, there are grander agendas afoot. While the withdrawal of U.S. troops has dampened the insurgency in some respects, it has also given the hodgepodge of global jihadist groups in the region freer rein.
According to one Afghan official, members of the Pakistani Taliban, Jaish-e-Mohammed and other groups alien to Afghanistan are regularly present in Nuristan. Western diplomats say that links between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda are stronger in Nuristan and Kunar than anywhere else in the country — and that Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmir Islamist militant group backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, is a growing presence. The group is blamed for the massacre of a party of aid workers in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, next door to Nuristan, in 2010.
Earlier in May, an explosion rocked a house in the Nuristani village of Chatras, killing two Arab fighters thought to belong to al-Qaeda, two retired Pakistani soldiers, three local Talibs — and the 12-year-old boy they were drilling in the craft of suicide bombing. "After the instruction, they fitted the jacket on him," the Afghan official told TIME, "And he said, 'O.K., should I walk like this?' 'Yes, yes.' 'And I should press this button?' And he pressed the button and exploded."
The influx has brought its own problems, with clashes between local Taliban commanders and die-hard outsiders. In a stark illustration of the tension, a Lashkar-e-Taiba commander called Maulawi Ahmad last winter ambushed the shadow governor of Nuristan, Jamil Rahman, who is Zahir's boss. Rahman had publicly upbraided Ahmad for kidnapping engineers working on a road that would improve life for local communities. Ahmad's men reportedly beat Rahman with sticks until they broke his arm. Many foreign militants flowing into Nuristan continue to see such foreign aid projects as legitimate targets.
It remains to be seen whether these interlopers from Pakistan will have better luck taming Nuristan's wild valleys than NATO has. But even if they're unsuccessful, the situation — a weak government under siege by local insurgents and tensions deepening between the region's myriad factions and strongmen — offers a sobering picture of what the rest of Afghanistan could look like when NATO leaves.
Headlines
Mirror.co.uk - James Lyons
BRITAIN is pressing the UN to lift sanctions against ex-Taliban commanders to help persuade Islamist rebels to stand down. The UK and US both want to scrap some of the restrictions put in place after the 9/11 ...
Mirror.co.uk - James Lyons
BRITAIN is pressing the UN to lift sanctions against ex-Taliban commanders to help persuade Islamist rebels to stand down. The UK and US both want to scrap some of the restrictions put in place after the 9/11 ...
With friends like these, who needs the Taliban?
Global Post. Jean MacKenzie
Afghanistan's Council of Religious Scholars calls for a harsh crackdown on independent media on grounds of “immorality.” ...
UN may lift ex-Taliban sanctions
BBC News
It has asked for 18 people to be removed from the sanctions list. Sanctions include a travel ban and the freezing of assets. The request is seen as part of broader efforts to promote reconciliation in Afghanistan and to explore the possibility of peace ...
Two Visions Of Talking To The Taliban
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - Zarif Nazar, Jan Alekozai
By RFE/RL There are few things more divisive in Afghanistan today than the question of talking to the Taliban. The issue has become a national hot-button since President Hamid Karzai created a High Peace Council in September to reach out to the Taliban ...
Britain and US in drive to lift sanctions on former Taliban
Telegraph.co.uk - Alex Spillius - Jun 2, 2011
The United Nations is set to rule on appeals by Afghanistan to remove sanctions on former members of the Taliban, as part of a growing effort by Britain and the United States to promote reconciliation with remaining insurgents. ...
Green force
BBC News - Jun 2, 2011
By Tahir Qadiry BBC Persian TV
Green is the colour of choice for many young and educated Afghans who are agitating for change. It is the colour adopted by a new grassroots political movement inspired by the popular revolts sweeping across the Arab world ...
Talking to the Taliban: Less than meets the eye
The Guardian - Jun 2, 2011
Our report today that Britain and America are pressing for UN sanctions against 18 former senior members of the Taliban to be lifted is encouraging news. In opposing the troop surge in Afghanistan, we have argued that this long war will only come to an ...
Taliban zealot who banned TV points to his set. 'We've changed,' he insists
The Guardian - Jun 2, 2011
Mohammed Qalamuddin's religious police beat women who wore high heels and makeup. Now UN sanctions against him may be lifted – with the backing of the US and Britain Haqqani Taliban fighters in their mountain camp in eastern Afghanistan. ...
Making peace with the Taliban? UN pressed to lift Afghan sanctions
The Guardian - Jun 2, 2011
Haqqani Taliban fighters in Khost, east Afghanistan. Their representaives visited Kabul for talks. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad for the Guardian Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban ...
BRITAIN is pressing the UN to lift sanctions against ex-Taliban commanders to help persuade Islamist rebels to stand down. The UK and US both want to scrap some of the restrictions put in place after the 9/11 ...
Mirror.co.uk - James Lyons
BRITAIN is pressing the UN to lift sanctions against ex-Taliban commanders to help persuade Islamist rebels to stand down. The UK and US both want to scrap some of the restrictions put in place after the 9/11 ...
With friends like these, who needs the Taliban?
Global Post. Jean MacKenzie
Afghanistan's Council of Religious Scholars calls for a harsh crackdown on independent media on grounds of “immorality.” ...
UN may lift ex-Taliban sanctions
BBC News
It has asked for 18 people to be removed from the sanctions list. Sanctions include a travel ban and the freezing of assets. The request is seen as part of broader efforts to promote reconciliation in Afghanistan and to explore the possibility of peace ...
Two Visions Of Talking To The Taliban
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - Zarif Nazar, Jan Alekozai
By RFE/RL There are few things more divisive in Afghanistan today than the question of talking to the Taliban. The issue has become a national hot-button since President Hamid Karzai created a High Peace Council in September to reach out to the Taliban ...
Britain and US in drive to lift sanctions on former Taliban
Telegraph.co.uk - Alex Spillius - Jun 2, 2011
The United Nations is set to rule on appeals by Afghanistan to remove sanctions on former members of the Taliban, as part of a growing effort by Britain and the United States to promote reconciliation with remaining insurgents. ...
Green force
BBC News - Jun 2, 2011
By Tahir Qadiry BBC Persian TV
Green is the colour of choice for many young and educated Afghans who are agitating for change. It is the colour adopted by a new grassroots political movement inspired by the popular revolts sweeping across the Arab world ...
Talking to the Taliban: Less than meets the eye
The Guardian - Jun 2, 2011
Our report today that Britain and America are pressing for UN sanctions against 18 former senior members of the Taliban to be lifted is encouraging news. In opposing the troop surge in Afghanistan, we have argued that this long war will only come to an ...
Taliban zealot who banned TV points to his set. 'We've changed,' he insists
The Guardian - Jun 2, 2011
Mohammed Qalamuddin's religious police beat women who wore high heels and makeup. Now UN sanctions against him may be lifted – with the backing of the US and Britain Haqqani Taliban fighters in their mountain camp in eastern Afghanistan. ...
Making peace with the Taliban? UN pressed to lift Afghan sanctions
The Guardian - Jun 2, 2011
Haqqani Taliban fighters in Khost, east Afghanistan. Their representaives visited Kabul for talks. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad for the Guardian Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban ...
Friday, June 17, 2011
"Don't count on a peace deal with Taliban"
"Don't count on a peace deal with Taliban"
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
May 26, 2011 6:14 a.m. EDT
[CNN] Editor's Note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is the director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation. His latest book is "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda." This article is based on testimony that Bergen gave Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
> Peter Bergen says hopes of a peace deal with Taliban are unlikely to be realized
> He cites nine obstacles standing in the way of a negotiated settlement
> He says Taliban's Mullah Omar has taken extreme stands, resists reasonable compromises
> Bergen says engaging Taliban in peace talks makes sense even if chances of a deal are remote
Washington (CNN) -- Recently, both The Washington Post and the German magazine Der Spiegel have reported on meetings between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban that have taken place in Germany to discuss some form of peace negotiations.
Talking to the Taliban makes sense, but there are major impediments standing in the way of a deal.
First, who exactly is there to negotiate with in the Taliban? It's been a decade since their fall from power, and the "moderate" Taliban who wanted to reconcile with the Afghan government have already done so. They are the same group of Taliban who are constantly trotted out in any discussion of a putative Taliban deal: Mullah Zaeef, their former ambassador to Pakistan; Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, their foreign minister; and Abdul Hakim Mujahid, who was the Taliban representative in the United States before 9/11. This group was generally opposed to Osama bin Laden well before he attacked the United States.
Bin Laden told intimates that his biggest enemies in the world were the United States and the Taliban Foreign Ministry, which was trying to put the kibosh on his anti-Western antics in Afghanistan. And today the "moderate" already-reconciled Taliban don't represent the Taliban on the battlefield, because they haven't been part of the movement for the past decade.
The key Taliban figure is still their leader, Mullah Omar, aka "The Commander of the Faithful." The title indicates that Mullah Omar is not just the leader of the Taliban, but also of all Muslims. This suggests that Mullah Omar is not only a religious fanatic, but also a fanatic with significant delusions of grandeur. Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.
Almost every country in the world -- including the Taliban leader's quasi-patron, Pakistan -- pleaded with Mullah Omar in the spring of 2001 not to blow up the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan's greatest cultural patrimony. But he did so anyway. After 9/11, Mullah Omar was prepared to lose his entire regime on the point of principle that he would not give up bin Laden to the United States following the attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon. And he did.
(Senior U.S. military officials tell me that it is their view that Mullah Omar is living at least some of the time in the southern Pakistani megacity of Karachi. President Obama has indicated he would be willing to launch another operation, along the lines of the one that killed bin Laden, if another major target such as Mullah Omar were located.)
Since his regime fell, Mullah Omar has also shown no appetite for negotiation or compromise. He is joined in this attitude by some senior members of his movement, such as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a Taliban leader in eastern Afghanistan, who said in January, "Neither has there been any peace talk nor has any of the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) shown any inclination towards it."
Second, the Taliban have had ten years to reject bin Laden and all his works, and they haven't done so. For this reason, Saudi Arabia, which has hosted "talks about talks" in Mecca between Afghan government officials and some Taliban representatives, has soured on the process.
Third, "the Taliban" are really many Talibans, and so a deal with one insurgent group doesn't mean the end of the insurgency writ large. It's not clear that even Mullah Omar can deliver all of the Taliban that he nominally controls in southern Afghanistan, because they are often fissured into purely local groups, many of whom are a long way from Taliban HQ across the border in Quetta, Pakistan. As Amb. Richard Holbrooke commented three months before he died, "There's no Ho Chi Minh. There's no Slobodan Milosevic. There's no Palestinian Authority." Instead, there are several leaders of the various wings of the insurgency, from the Quetta Shura in southern Afghanistan, to the Haqqani Network in the east, as well as smaller insurgent groups, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami in the northeast.
Fourth, the history of "peace" deals with the Taliban in Pakistan shows that the groups can't be trusted. Deals between the Pakistani government and the Taliban in Waziristan in 2005 and 2006 and in Swat in 2009 were merely preludes to the Taliban establishing their brutal "emirates," regrouping and then moving into adjoining areas to seize more territory.
Fifth, the arrest in Pakistan last year of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban No. 2 who had been negotiating directly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, shows that the Pakistani military and government want to retain a veto over any significant negotiations going forward. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, as certainly Pakistan's legitimate interests in the post-American Afghanistan must be recognized, but it also demonstrates that negotiations with the Taliban will not be as straightforward as just having the Afghan government and the insurgents at the negotiating table.
Sixth, other key players in any negotiations with the Taliban are the former leaders of the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, who fought a bitter several-years war with the Taliban and who now occupy prominent positions in Afghanistan -- for instance, the minister of the interior, Bismullah Khan, and Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main rival for the presidency in 2009, who is -- at least for now -- the most likely candidate to succeed Karzai in the 2014 presidential elections. These leaders are not going to allow all they fought for to be reversed by a deal with the Taliban that gives them significant concessions on territory or principle.
Seventh, the several meetings over the past three years between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in Mecca and in the Maldives to discuss "reconciliation" have so far produced a big zero. A senior U.S. military officer dismissed these talks as "reconciliation tourism," while an Afghan official joked with me that in landlocked Afghanistan, "Everybody wanted to go to the Maldives for a meeting."
Eighth, the debacle involving Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour last year shows how much of a fog surrounds the whole reconciliation process. Mullah Mansour was portrayed as one of the most senior of the Taliban leaders, who was in direct negotiations with the Karzai government in the fall of 2010. Except it then turned out he wasn't Mullah Mansour at all, but a Quetta shopkeeper who had spun a good yarn about his Taliban credentials so he could pick up what a British government report characterizes as "significant sums."
Finally, and most importantly: What do the Taliban really want? It's relatively easy to discern what they don't want: international forces in Afghanistan. But other than their blanket demand for the rule of Sharia law, the Taliban have not articulated their vision for the future of Afghanistan. Do they envision a democratic state with elections? Do they see a role for women outside the home? What about education for girls? What about ethnic minorities?
While these obstacles show that reaching an accommodation with the Taliban is going to be quite difficult, that doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying. Even if peace talks are not successful they can have other helpful effects, such as splitting the facade of Taliban unity.
Even simple discussions about the future shape of negotiations can help sow dissension in the Taliban ranks, while if such discussions do move forward in even incremental steps, more intelligence can be garnered about what exactly is going on inside the shadowy Taliban movement. Also, getting the Taliban to enter into any negotiations means that they will no longer get to occupy the moral high ground of fighting a supposed holy war, but will instead be getting their hands dirty in more conventional political back-room deals.
Audrey Cronin of the National Defense University has systematically examined how and why terrorist/insurgent groups come to some kind of peace deal and has laid out some general principles about what that usually takes, which are worth considering in the context of Afghanistan.
First, there must be recognition on both sides that a military stalemate has been reached. (In the early 1980s the American academic William Zartman coined the term a "mutually hurting stalemate" to describe the moment when combatants will start considering a peace settlement.)
That precondition may now exist to some degree, given that over the past six months or so the Taliban have taken heavy losses in their heartlands of Kandahar, while the U.S. public has increasingly turned against what is already America's longest war. In December, 60% of Americans said the war was "not worth fighting," according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll -- up from 41% in 2007.
An important shift in the Obama administration's stance on Taliban negotiations was recently signaled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While giving the Richard Holbrooke memorial lecture at the Asia Society in New York on February 18, Clinton said that previous American conditions for talks with the Taliban -- that they lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and embrace the Afghan Constitution -- were no longer conditions that the Taliban had to meet before negotiations could begin, but were "necessary outcomes" of the final peace process.
Judging by the lack of media attention in the United States to this shift, this subtle but important distinction was probably also not well grasped by the Taliban, but it does represent a somewhat more flexible American position.
Similarly the Afghan government has now adopted "reconciliation" as its official policy, setting up a "High Peace Council" in the fall to help facilitate those negotiations, a body that is made up, in part, of a number of leaders from the former Northern Alliance, who are less likely to act as spoilers of a peace process if they feel they are a part of it.
Successful negotiations often require a capable and trusted third party sponsor. This condition seems also to be lacking right now: The Saudis are, at best, lukewarm about facilitating talks with the Taliban; the Pakistanis are not really trusted by any of the parties in the conflict, even by much of the Taliban; and while the United Nations may have some role to play in negotiations, Taliban attacks on U.N. personnel in Afghanistan last year don't suggest this avenue has much immediate promise. (Murmurings about a role for Turkey in facilitating a deal may have some potential, given that Turkey has an Islamist government and is also a key member of NATO.)
A peace deal also generally requires strong leadership on both the government and insurgent sides to force a settlement. Neither Hamid Karzai nor Mullah Omar fits this particular bill. Finally, Cronin explains that the overall political context must be favorable to negotiations for a deal to succeed. Here there is some real hope: While fewer then one in ten Afghans have a favorable view of the Taliban, a large majority is in favor of negotiating with them. Nationally, around three-quarters of Afghans favor talks, while in Kandahar the number goes up to a stratospheric 94%.
All that said, the bottom line on the Taliban reconciliation process is that nothing of any real note is currently happening. According to a Western official familiar with the record of discussions with the Taliban, the chances of a deal with the Taliban similar to the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkans war in the mid-1990s, or the Good Friday Agreement that ended the IRA campaign against the British government, are "negligible" for the foreseeable future. The official says that Mullah Omar needs his council of ulema (religious scholars) to sign off on a peace deal and there is "no sign of this right now."
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Bergen.
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
May 26, 2011 6:14 a.m. EDT
[CNN] Editor's Note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is the director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation. His latest book is "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda." This article is based on testimony that Bergen gave Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
> Peter Bergen says hopes of a peace deal with Taliban are unlikely to be realized
> He cites nine obstacles standing in the way of a negotiated settlement
> He says Taliban's Mullah Omar has taken extreme stands, resists reasonable compromises
> Bergen says engaging Taliban in peace talks makes sense even if chances of a deal are remote
Washington (CNN) -- Recently, both The Washington Post and the German magazine Der Spiegel have reported on meetings between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban that have taken place in Germany to discuss some form of peace negotiations.
Talking to the Taliban makes sense, but there are major impediments standing in the way of a deal.
First, who exactly is there to negotiate with in the Taliban? It's been a decade since their fall from power, and the "moderate" Taliban who wanted to reconcile with the Afghan government have already done so. They are the same group of Taliban who are constantly trotted out in any discussion of a putative Taliban deal: Mullah Zaeef, their former ambassador to Pakistan; Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, their foreign minister; and Abdul Hakim Mujahid, who was the Taliban representative in the United States before 9/11. This group was generally opposed to Osama bin Laden well before he attacked the United States.
Bin Laden told intimates that his biggest enemies in the world were the United States and the Taliban Foreign Ministry, which was trying to put the kibosh on his anti-Western antics in Afghanistan. And today the "moderate" already-reconciled Taliban don't represent the Taliban on the battlefield, because they haven't been part of the movement for the past decade.
The key Taliban figure is still their leader, Mullah Omar, aka "The Commander of the Faithful." The title indicates that Mullah Omar is not just the leader of the Taliban, but also of all Muslims. This suggests that Mullah Omar is not only a religious fanatic, but also a fanatic with significant delusions of grandeur. Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.
Almost every country in the world -- including the Taliban leader's quasi-patron, Pakistan -- pleaded with Mullah Omar in the spring of 2001 not to blow up the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan's greatest cultural patrimony. But he did so anyway. After 9/11, Mullah Omar was prepared to lose his entire regime on the point of principle that he would not give up bin Laden to the United States following the attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon. And he did.
(Senior U.S. military officials tell me that it is their view that Mullah Omar is living at least some of the time in the southern Pakistani megacity of Karachi. President Obama has indicated he would be willing to launch another operation, along the lines of the one that killed bin Laden, if another major target such as Mullah Omar were located.)
Since his regime fell, Mullah Omar has also shown no appetite for negotiation or compromise. He is joined in this attitude by some senior members of his movement, such as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a Taliban leader in eastern Afghanistan, who said in January, "Neither has there been any peace talk nor has any of the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) shown any inclination towards it."
Second, the Taliban have had ten years to reject bin Laden and all his works, and they haven't done so. For this reason, Saudi Arabia, which has hosted "talks about talks" in Mecca between Afghan government officials and some Taliban representatives, has soured on the process.
Third, "the Taliban" are really many Talibans, and so a deal with one insurgent group doesn't mean the end of the insurgency writ large. It's not clear that even Mullah Omar can deliver all of the Taliban that he nominally controls in southern Afghanistan, because they are often fissured into purely local groups, many of whom are a long way from Taliban HQ across the border in Quetta, Pakistan. As Amb. Richard Holbrooke commented three months before he died, "There's no Ho Chi Minh. There's no Slobodan Milosevic. There's no Palestinian Authority." Instead, there are several leaders of the various wings of the insurgency, from the Quetta Shura in southern Afghanistan, to the Haqqani Network in the east, as well as smaller insurgent groups, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami in the northeast.
Fourth, the history of "peace" deals with the Taliban in Pakistan shows that the groups can't be trusted. Deals between the Pakistani government and the Taliban in Waziristan in 2005 and 2006 and in Swat in 2009 were merely preludes to the Taliban establishing their brutal "emirates," regrouping and then moving into adjoining areas to seize more territory.
Fifth, the arrest in Pakistan last year of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban No. 2 who had been negotiating directly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, shows that the Pakistani military and government want to retain a veto over any significant negotiations going forward. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, as certainly Pakistan's legitimate interests in the post-American Afghanistan must be recognized, but it also demonstrates that negotiations with the Taliban will not be as straightforward as just having the Afghan government and the insurgents at the negotiating table.
Sixth, other key players in any negotiations with the Taliban are the former leaders of the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, who fought a bitter several-years war with the Taliban and who now occupy prominent positions in Afghanistan -- for instance, the minister of the interior, Bismullah Khan, and Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main rival for the presidency in 2009, who is -- at least for now -- the most likely candidate to succeed Karzai in the 2014 presidential elections. These leaders are not going to allow all they fought for to be reversed by a deal with the Taliban that gives them significant concessions on territory or principle.
Seventh, the several meetings over the past three years between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in Mecca and in the Maldives to discuss "reconciliation" have so far produced a big zero. A senior U.S. military officer dismissed these talks as "reconciliation tourism," while an Afghan official joked with me that in landlocked Afghanistan, "Everybody wanted to go to the Maldives for a meeting."
Eighth, the debacle involving Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour last year shows how much of a fog surrounds the whole reconciliation process. Mullah Mansour was portrayed as one of the most senior of the Taliban leaders, who was in direct negotiations with the Karzai government in the fall of 2010. Except it then turned out he wasn't Mullah Mansour at all, but a Quetta shopkeeper who had spun a good yarn about his Taliban credentials so he could pick up what a British government report characterizes as "significant sums."
Finally, and most importantly: What do the Taliban really want? It's relatively easy to discern what they don't want: international forces in Afghanistan. But other than their blanket demand for the rule of Sharia law, the Taliban have not articulated their vision for the future of Afghanistan. Do they envision a democratic state with elections? Do they see a role for women outside the home? What about education for girls? What about ethnic minorities?
While these obstacles show that reaching an accommodation with the Taliban is going to be quite difficult, that doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying. Even if peace talks are not successful they can have other helpful effects, such as splitting the facade of Taliban unity.
Even simple discussions about the future shape of negotiations can help sow dissension in the Taliban ranks, while if such discussions do move forward in even incremental steps, more intelligence can be garnered about what exactly is going on inside the shadowy Taliban movement. Also, getting the Taliban to enter into any negotiations means that they will no longer get to occupy the moral high ground of fighting a supposed holy war, but will instead be getting their hands dirty in more conventional political back-room deals.
Audrey Cronin of the National Defense University has systematically examined how and why terrorist/insurgent groups come to some kind of peace deal and has laid out some general principles about what that usually takes, which are worth considering in the context of Afghanistan.
First, there must be recognition on both sides that a military stalemate has been reached. (In the early 1980s the American academic William Zartman coined the term a "mutually hurting stalemate" to describe the moment when combatants will start considering a peace settlement.)
That precondition may now exist to some degree, given that over the past six months or so the Taliban have taken heavy losses in their heartlands of Kandahar, while the U.S. public has increasingly turned against what is already America's longest war. In December, 60% of Americans said the war was "not worth fighting," according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll -- up from 41% in 2007.
An important shift in the Obama administration's stance on Taliban negotiations was recently signaled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While giving the Richard Holbrooke memorial lecture at the Asia Society in New York on February 18, Clinton said that previous American conditions for talks with the Taliban -- that they lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and embrace the Afghan Constitution -- were no longer conditions that the Taliban had to meet before negotiations could begin, but were "necessary outcomes" of the final peace process.
Judging by the lack of media attention in the United States to this shift, this subtle but important distinction was probably also not well grasped by the Taliban, but it does represent a somewhat more flexible American position.
Similarly the Afghan government has now adopted "reconciliation" as its official policy, setting up a "High Peace Council" in the fall to help facilitate those negotiations, a body that is made up, in part, of a number of leaders from the former Northern Alliance, who are less likely to act as spoilers of a peace process if they feel they are a part of it.
Successful negotiations often require a capable and trusted third party sponsor. This condition seems also to be lacking right now: The Saudis are, at best, lukewarm about facilitating talks with the Taliban; the Pakistanis are not really trusted by any of the parties in the conflict, even by much of the Taliban; and while the United Nations may have some role to play in negotiations, Taliban attacks on U.N. personnel in Afghanistan last year don't suggest this avenue has much immediate promise. (Murmurings about a role for Turkey in facilitating a deal may have some potential, given that Turkey has an Islamist government and is also a key member of NATO.)
A peace deal also generally requires strong leadership on both the government and insurgent sides to force a settlement. Neither Hamid Karzai nor Mullah Omar fits this particular bill. Finally, Cronin explains that the overall political context must be favorable to negotiations for a deal to succeed. Here there is some real hope: While fewer then one in ten Afghans have a favorable view of the Taliban, a large majority is in favor of negotiating with them. Nationally, around three-quarters of Afghans favor talks, while in Kandahar the number goes up to a stratospheric 94%.
All that said, the bottom line on the Taliban reconciliation process is that nothing of any real note is currently happening. According to a Western official familiar with the record of discussions with the Taliban, the chances of a deal with the Taliban similar to the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkans war in the mid-1990s, or the Good Friday Agreement that ended the IRA campaign against the British government, are "negligible" for the foreseeable future. The official says that Mullah Omar needs his council of ulema (religious scholars) to sign off on a peace deal and there is "no sign of this right now."
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Bergen.
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