Day: November 3, 2010
What does the R-tsunami mean for peace?
Hard to tell of course, but money is going to be tight. Aaron David Miller has already argued on the merits that the President should “go small and stay home” (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/01/go_small_and_stay_home). The Republican House is likely to make limited engagement abroad a financial necessity. The Tea Partiers aren’t likely to align with John McCain on the war in Afghanistan any more than with Hillary Clinton on enhancing American diplomacy and international development. Better duck: this is one more pendulum swinging to the (isolationist) right.
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Is anyone really talking with the Taliban?
It is always difficult to get a fix on negotiations that necessarily occur behind the scenes, even if “secret” is a category that rarely holds tight these days. Talks, or non-talks, or talks about talks, held while fighting is still going on are particularly hard to fathom.
Afghanistan Analysts Network offers a blog blow by blow of recent action: http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=1286
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit takes a hard look at Kabul’s latest program and finds it lacking: Peace At All Costs? Reintegration and Reconciliation in Afghanistan, see http://www.areu.org.af/
Crisis States Research Centre offers a UN-eyed perspective, but one that fails to cover events past 2008, even though it was published recently: http://www.crisisstates.com/download/wp/wpSeries2/WP66.2.pdf
Best on the meaning of “reconciliation” in the Afghanistan context is still Michael Semple’s Reconciliation in Afghanistan: http://bookstore.usip.org/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=215572
The key question to ask about all of this is not the journalistic “who what where when why?” More important is what the Americans might be offering as incentives for reconciliation. Control over territory? Positions in the Kabul government, or governors’ positions in the provinces? A license to trade poppy? Promises on withdrawal?
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