Afghanistan: why negotiate?

As global attention focuses on the uncertainty in Egypt, the seemingly-ceaseless conflict in Syria, and Edward Snowden’s world tour to seek asylum, another development has gone largely unnoticed – US efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. As predicted, it appears that these talks will proceed, despite the recent attempts by the Karzai government to derail them over a dispute about a Taliban office and flag in Qatar.

US and allied forces are set to withdraw from Afghanistan sometime in 2014. As relations with the Afghan government deteriorate, the withdrawal may come sooner than many expected. As a result, US policy makers have deemed it imperative for there to be some sort of a political process that will ensure the security and stability of both Afghanistan and the broader region. They have increasingly made overtures to Taliban leaders. On Monday, the New America Foundation hosted a panel on what can be expected from these developments and examined the broader context of trying to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban in a study titled, “Talking to the Taliban: Hope over History?” (the complete text of their study can be found here).

Ryan Evans, one of the co-authors of the study makes it clear that the US embraced negotiations by 2010 once it was clear that US and NATO forces would not be able to compel the Taliban militarily. According to Evans, negotiations were considered an alternate counterinsurgency strategy – one that has been unsuccessful to date. Evans and most of the experts remain deeply skeptical that these negotiations will be successful.

Many have tried to compare these talks with the Taliban to other examples of bringing insurgents, terrorists, and/or rebels to the negotiating table. They point to the British experience with the IRA, the Dayton Agreement in the Balkans, and the Iraqi Awakening movement that began in the Anbar Province of western Iraq in 2005. Yet the history of Afghanistan, its complex tribal structures, and its aversion to strong centralized power sets it apart from these other contexts.

Peter Neumann, another co-author of the new study, believes that negotiating with the Taliban now may even further destabilize the political situation inside Afghanistan. As he puts it, these negotiations “take longer than the US has left.” From his experience, such talks are grueling, frustrating undertakings that take years to put together and even longer to implement. The US insistence on negotiating as it plans its withdrawal puts it at position of weakness and allows the Taliban to exploit the US position. Reconciliation negotiations must be inclusive of all relevant parties — attempts to sideline the Karzai administration pose another serious obstacle. While Karzai has proven unreliable in fulfilling his promises, Neumann argues that he still “retains the ability to sabotage” the negotiations.

Karzai will not allow himself to be humiliated by others. That is why we continue to see his strong objections to US – Taliban dialogue. But he is hardly the biggest obstacle to a resolution. Ambassador Omar Samad, an Afghanistan expert and a former Afghan ambassador to both France and Canada, cites a much larger problem: even after over a decade of war, the US still does not truly understand the Afghan Taliban, does not have a clear picture of what their demands are, and cannot reliably distinguish between potential partners and hardened enemies. According to Samad, the Taliban has no more than 30,000 active combatants and public support for the Taliban has never reached higher than 7%.

While the West sometimes frames the internal conflict as Pashtun grievances leading to violence, Samad, rejects this narrative by citing the makeup of the Afghan government at nearly 80% Pashtun. Before negotiating, the US should better understand who it is facing, what they want, and why they keep fighting.

In order for negotiations to succeed, all parties must have real incentives to participate and the capacity to implement an agreement. With the withdrawal of Allied troops, the Taliban has little to gain from compromising. Further, many question whether the Taliban is really a hierarchical structure, similar to that of the IRA. Neumann and others doubt that any one leader could “deliver” all of the Taliban. Still, the clock is ticking on the future of Afghanistan. US forces will be largely gone in a year’s time. Afghan presidential elections are scheduled to take place in April 2014, a real test for a young democracy.  Rivals are being forced to work out their differences in a rushed and seemingly haphazard process.

Could these negotiations do more harm than good?