A negotiated peace in Afghanistan with the Taliban is becoming conventional wisdom in DC. But the plan is fraught with difficulty
Whenever a policy position becomes conventional wisdom in Washington, there are usually good reasons to be suspicious of it. Such is certainly the case with the growing bipartisan consensus behind negotiating with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan. In the last several months, much of official Washington has recently come around to the view that some kind of grand bargain with the Taliban may be necessary to secure the peace. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has even gone as far as to re-label the US approach in Afghanistan as "fight, talk, and build".
The idea of talking to the Taliban as a way of ending the long struggle in Afghanistan is hardly novel, but it is worth pursuing. For the United States, there is no reason to turn away from negotiations if they are offered in good faith, because an outright victory over the Taliban is probably impossible to achieve. The recent moves by the Taliban leadership to establish an office in Qatar is an encouraging sign that they may finally be serious about talking. Moreover, there are some reports that the Afghan Taliban have tabled specific demands, and even offered a full blueprint of what a possible peace with the United States would look like. These facts alone suggest that the US should take the prospects of talks seriously and be willing to countenance a settlement that is not resolved by force alone.
However, the US needs to be careful not to misconstrue the prospect of negotiation as the only way of way out of the mess that it has created in Afghanistan. Talking with the Taliban is not, in itself, a solution to the problem; in fact, it raises more questions than it answers. First, despite these encouraging overtures, it remains unclear whether the Taliban are serious about peace, or are merely playing for time. As Karl Inderfurth pointed out in a recent essay, the Taliban are masters at talking and fighting at the same time. The Taliban insist that they have not given up the fight and that they will never accept the legitimacy of the "stooge" administration in Kabul (pdf). Given that the Taliban have long craved international respectability, it is likely that they are using the pretext of negotiations to open an office in Qatar, to burnish their image and to expand their international contacts. Such steps may only be tactical, and cannot yet be interpreted as evidence of a change in heart.
Second, it remains unclear whether the balance of power on the battlefield truly favors negotiations with the Taliban. The Department of Defense reported that enemy-initiated attacks are down (pdf) , but according to Human Rights Watch, 2011 was the most violent year so far in the war in Afghanistan. Moreover, recent data suggests that violence has recently increased in the Taliban strongholds in the south and east of the country. While Nato maintains that these spikes in violence are due to bringing the fight to the enemy, the reality is probably murkier.
The relatively brazen attacks of the last few weeks – including the storming of a government building in the east of the country, and the assassination of French soldiers on 20 January – do not suggest that the Taliban movement is crippled by battlefield losses. This is important because the battlefield calculation is predominant: the Taliban will not negotiate in good faith or strike a deal unless they think the war is turning against them. At the present moment, the evidence suggests instead that the Taliban think that the war is at a stalemate; and that it is a good time to capitalize on the gains that they have made since their resurgence in 2004-05.
Third, there is a marked difference between the clarity of the demands of the Taliban – a complete withdrawal of foreign troops, the release of prisoners and the removal of key leaders from the UN blacklists – and the unclear goals that the US has. The US demanded the Taliban renounce ties to terrorists and endorse peace efforts before opening in Qatar, but beyond that its bottom line for the settlement remains unclear. Would the US, for example, encourage the Taliban to be involved in a coalition government? Would the US allow a Taliban-influenced government to roll back some of the liberal advances – especially in terms of education, women's rights and freedom of the press – currently allowed under the Karzai regime? And what leverage would the US have over developments in Afghanistan if it fully withdraws its forces?
Worse still, the fact that it is now election season in the US – the time in which political leaders cheerfully say what sounds good at home even if it is at odds with reality – will work against serious negotiations proceeding. In his state of the union speech, President Obama pledged to "wind down" the war in Afghanistan, which sends a message to the Taliban "only wait things out; the US will leave on its own accord". The current circus which characterises the GOP field is no better, with nominal frontrunner Mitt Romney offering only that the way with to deal with the Taliban is to beat them (as if it were so simple). Given the uncertainty generated by the American election cycle, the Taliban have every reason to delay and see who they're dealing with after November 2012, rather than to strike a deal now.
Fourth, even if the negotiations got underway between the US and the Taliban, there is no way that a deal would be struck without interference from key players – especially the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan – whose interests are threatened by a deal. Despite the choreography designed to seek Karzai's blessings for the talks, his government has deep reservations about them, for a power-sharing agreement with the Taliban would leave him at their mercy after US forces depart. Throughout this process, he is likely to follow his normal practice of blustering, making inconsistent demands and engaging in brinkmanship to prevent the US from selling him out in a separate peace with the Taliban.
No matter how good an offer the Taliban makes, the US cannot easily shove aside Hamid Karzai's government, but rather may find itself tethered to a client who shamelessly stole the democratic elections in 2009. Similarly, Pakistan has supported the Taliban for years as a way of destabilizing Afghanistan, keeping India off balance and extorting aid and assistance for their "cooperation" from the US. Although the Pakistani Taliban has recently turned on the Pakistani army, it is hard to imagine that the Afghan Taliban's backers in the ISI would be satisfied with a peace settlement that deprives them of a strategic asset in their game with India.
Finally, even if the leadership core of the Taliban were serious about a peace deal with the United States, it remains unclear whether the Taliban leadership could deliver on the terms of the peace that they promised. The Taliban is a diffuse movement, which is aligned with local factions and the notorious Islamist alliance the Haqqani network, as well as an array of Pakistani-based Islamist forces. Even though they appear to be making token efforts to include Haqqanis in the negotiations, the extent to which Quetta Shura Council can control their own factions – and reign in those factions from responding to provocations by the Afghan government or other players – is in doubt. Much of the recent violence, conducted by small groups of Taliban, does not suggest that their forces are under tight control. This fact does not bode well for a peace settlement ,which, at best, is likely to be tenuous. How many shocks – or attacks along the lines of what is currently happening in Iraq – could a US-Taliban deal sustain without unraveling?
All of these concerns are not a reason to reject negotiations with the Taliban, only to understand that the "peace" that comes from them will be fragile and violent, and may contain terms that most Americans would be loath to accept. No matter what officials in Washington or on the campaign trail promise, negotiations with the Taliban are unlikely to bring an end to the decade of fighting in Afghanistan anytime soon.