Peace prospects in Afghanistan


Written by Waheeda Khan • Region • December 2008

On both sides of the conflict in Afghanistan, the possibility of peace negotiations is gaining prominence. Though the Afghan war is at its highest pitch since it began seven years ago, growing daily in scope and savagery, in recent developments, Pakistani and Afghan leaders have agreed to seek peace talks with the Taliban in a bid to end insurgent violence on the frontline of the United States-led “war on terror”. An official announcement to this effect followed weeks of secret talks between Afghan officials and those from the hardline Islamist militia, tacitly supported by officials in Washington.

It also came after growing acknowledgements from British and American military commanders that a long-term military defeat of the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan was unfeasible. Tribal elders and politicians from Afghanistan and Pakistan reached the agreement after a two-day tribal council dubbed a “mini jirga” that was held in Islamabad.

“We agreed that contacts should be established with the opposition,” said Abdullah Abdullah, the former Afghan Foreign Minister and the head of the Afghan delegation at the talks. “Those who are willing to take this opportunity and come forward, the door is open.”

Asked whether the contacts would include the Taliban and other militants, Owais Ghani, leader of the Pakistani delegation and governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, said: “Yes, it includes all those who are involved in this conflict situation.”

The meeting was a follow-up to a much larger jirga held in Kabul in August 2007. The next meeting would be in Kabul in two or three months, Mr Abdullah said.

Saudi Arabia has said the Afghan government of president Hamid Karzai had made contact with

Violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan has risen year by year since American and British forces toppled the fundamentalist Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. Around 70,000 international troops, including 7,800 British soldiers, remain in Afghanistan battling a resurgent Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies.

Many of the militants are based in safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal border regions. CIA Predator drones have dramatically stepped up missile attacks on Pakistan’s tribal regions in the last two months.

Among Western and Afghan officials, analysts and tribal elders, field commanders and foot soldiers, the notion of talks with the Taliban, once dismissed out of hand, has now become the subject of serious debate.

Both sides acknowledge that there are enormous impediments. Each camp has staked out negotiating positions anathema to the other. Neither side professes the slightest trust in the other’s word. Each side claims not only a battlefield edge, but insists that it is winning the war for public support.

But whether or not they are willing to admit it publicly, both sides have powerful incentives for turning to negotiations rather than pushing ahead with a grinding war of attrition. Would-be mediators have emerged, preliminary contacts have taken place, and more indirect talks are likely soon.

All around, a sense of battle fatigue is undeniable.

”The most important consideration is the feelings of the Afghan people,” said Humayun Hamidzada, a senior aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “And the fact is that they are sick and tired of war.”

A major poll released by the Asia Foundation found that Afghans are growing more pessimistic about their future. Large swaths of the country are under Taliban control. Travel by road between major cities is a life-threatening gamble. In the capital, Kabul, murders and abductions are becoming commonplace.

Karzai has been the strongest proponent of reconciliation, at times alarming his US patrons with his appeals to the insurgents. But some ex-warlords who bear the scars of their own battles against the Taliban also support broad-based talks. A number of the movement’s former adherents believe there is room for negotiation, as do tribal leaders.

The insurgency in Afghanistan, which is made up of many disparate factions, has serious internal disagreements over any discourse with the enemy – Western allies, as well, appear divided.

”No one wants to be seen as tipping their own hand,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul. “So whenever there is some suggestion of readiness to talk expressed from any particular quarter, there’s also a backlash.”

The departing British commander in Afghanistan, Brig Mark Carleton-Smith, said the war could not be won militarily, suggesting that reconciliation was the only route to peace. Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the American commander of NATO forces in the country, responded by criticizing what he called defeatist attitudes.

Taliban spokesmen also disparaged the idea of peace talks, even though contacts took place in Saudi Arabia between Afghan representatives and several ex-Taliban who remain close to the austere Islamic movement.

Western and Afghan officials say there are signs of discord between ideological hard-liners who identify with Al Qaeda and local Taliban – native Afghans who do not necessarily subscribe to the idea of an overarching jihad, or holy war, against the West.

“You can talk to some foot soldiers, even to some commanders,” said Khaleeq Ahmad, a former senior aide to Karzai. “But the ones who are out there beheading people, you can’t talk to them. So where does that leave you?”

Among longtime observers, there is disagreement over whether so-called local Taliban can be separated from more radical, Al Qaeda-influenced factions.

Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, a former Taliban foreign minister who took part in the Saudi Arabia talks, has also said that Al Qaeda “will not be allowed to create an obstacle. ... It is the right of Afghans to negotiate for peace.”

But Waheed Muzhda, a senior Taliban official when the movement was in power who is now a researcher in Kabul, said Westerners would be disappointed if they sought to drive a wedge between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

”You cannot separate the two,” he said. “The Taliban didn’t give up Osama bin Laden, under the greatest possible pressure. Why would they break from Al Qaeda now?”

Hamidzada reiterated that Karzai is willing to talk to fugitive leaders of the insurgency – even those with a US bounty on their heads.

“The president is willing to talk with anyone, anywhere, even Mullah Omar,” he said, referring to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban movement’s self-described “emir” who sheltered bin Laden.

Critics within Karzai’s administration believe certain figures within the insurgency should remain blacklisted. But others insist that times have changed, and so should the policy.

”I fought against them, but that is not the way to solve the problem now,” said Taj Mohammed Mujahid, a former warlord who is now a lawmaker. “It is time to talk.”

Mujahid said any talks that did not eventually involve Omar and another key insurgent commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, would be meaningless. “They are the ones in charge,” he said.

Still, Omar and Hekmatyar do not control all factions in the field. The insurgency is intertwined with criminal gangs, drug lords, arms smugglers and local militia chieftains.

US officials have said little about the Karzai government’s peace overtures, other than that any talks must take place only with insurgents who accept the Afghan constitution and are willing to lay down their arms.

But Defence Secretary Robert Gates has suggested publicly that some form of negotiated settlement was possible, if not inevitable.