Political Settlement with the Taliban? :: Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recently confirmed that "preliminary contacts" with Afghan Taliban guerrillas have been established, in the hope of working towards a peace deal with the various Islamist insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan, perhaps mediated by Pakistan. This should come as no surprise. After all, many U.S. officials appear to be in a panic, trying to find Mullah Mohammed Omar who heads the Taliban Shura in Quetta, which is protected by the Pakistani military and intelligence as a buffer force against Baloch nationalist insurgents.

The aim is to have him bless a political deal on behalf of the Islamist guerrillas in Afghanistan. Indeed, U.S. and Afghan intelligence have revealed their desperation to locate and establish dialogue with Mullah Omar by fabricating rumors about his death, thinking that he will be provoked into exposing his position by issuing angry denials via statements or audio recordings. Add to this American officials' circulation of tales of U.S. "exploratory" talks with a senior aide to Mullah Omar, and it becomes apparent that the notion of a need for a "political settlement" with the Taliban is garnering more currency in Western policy circles. Such a suggestion has long been advocated by critics of the present strategy in Afghanistan. For instance, this editorial in the UK Independent on Sunday argues for reaching a peace deal with the Taliban as a prelude to withdrawal. Can that approach work?

In short, there are major impediments to striking a deal with these ideologically driven insurgents, significantly lowering the chances of achieving anything worthwhile out of these peace talks.

For example, past attempts at "reconciliation" with the Islamist militants in Afghanistan have yielded no promising results. Over the past three years, there have in fact been several meetings between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives, giving rise to nothing positive besides granting some figures of authority the chance to have a vacation in Saudi Arabia and the Maldives. Meanwhile, in Pakistan the army decided to negotiate a "Shari'a for Peace" agreement in 2009 with Taliban militants from Afghanistan who had taken up residence in Swat Valley (in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as North-West Frontier Province). All that followed was the establishment of an expansionist, brutal mini-emirate, eventually put down by the Pakistani security forces. This seriously puts in doubt the theory that these militant groups can be trusted, especially if they ever feel they have a tactical advantage over the Afghan army and police, something that could well be the case as Michael Scheuer (the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit) suggests.

Other problems include questions of practicality. Although Hezb-e-Islam, the Haqqani Network and the Taliban have all formed a close working relationship at the localized operational level in Afghanistan, there is no reason to suppose that, even if Mullah Omar were to sanction a peace settlement for the Afghan Taliban, the other militant groups would accept an agreement. Furthermore, the debacle over the case of Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour illustrates the level of uncertainty surrounding any potential reconciliation. It was claimed that Mullah Mansour was a senior Taliban leader in direct negotiation with the Karzai regime in the fall of last year. Later, it materialized that he was only a shopkeeper from Quetta who concocted a web of lies about his credentials in order to acquire money.

Most importantly, however, we have the moral dilemma. During the "Arab Spring," pundits all over the world have rightly been quick to note the failed American policy of not trying to promote democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. This was somewhat reversed by the Bush administration in 2003, giving rise to elections - whether local or national - in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Owing to impatience and a lack of understanding on the part of U.S. officials about what genuine democracy entails, the "business as usual" policy, mostly resumed after 2006, took over again with the advent of the Obama presidency. How ironic, therefore, that newspapers such as the UK-based The Independent should justifiably lambast friendly realpolitik dealings with authoritarian governments in the Arab world and yet urge for such settlements with some of the world's worst human rights violators.

Despite the appalling corruption of the government in Kabul and its own mockery of fundamental human rights such as freedom of religion, the Islamist militants are also extremely unpopular among the Afghan people as a whole. For they have their own record of terrorism that has targeted civilians for "crimes" such as allowing girls to be educated in schools, as well as persecuting non-Pashtun ethnic groups as part of a systematic policy of gross human rights violations. Indeed, although an increase in NATO air strikes has led to more civilian deaths lately, the fact is that the majority of Afghan civilians killed are victims of attacks at the hands of groups like the Afghan Taliban.

Thus, here is the crux of the problem: far too many are assuming a false dichotomy of "Taliban or Karzai." A deal that aims to bring about power sharing between the Karzai regime and the Islamist militant leaders, neither of whom have consent from the people at large, will not lead to peace and genuine political reconciliation to Afghanistan, or stabilize the wider region. Rather, it amounts to nothing more than a perfidious, undemocratic agreement to monopolize power in the hands of elites. In the case of Karzai's government, note the widespread electoral fraud in the Afghan presidential elections of 2009 and the parliamentary elections in September of last year. What ever happened to "civil society," as we call it? Do the Independent and other champions of dealing with the Islamist insurgents think it is not possible for such a thing to exist in Afghanistan?

The only viable solution is to focus on a much broader form of reconciliation that addresses the legitimate grievances of the localized Pashtun and Nuristani insurgencies in the south and east, which are composed of seemingly infinite, local groups and are too often not distinguished from the ideological insurgent groups such as the Haqqani Network. The primary concern of the Pashtun and Nuristani insurgencies is what they consider the imposition of an unrepresentative, corrupt central government by foreign troops, whether NATO forces or the Afghan army and police whose ranks are largely filled with Tajiks, Uzbeks and other non-Pashtuns and non-Nuristanis. This is why we have become embroiled in an essentially pointless quagmire in the south and east, while elsewhere the Islamist insurgents either make gains or are held in a back-and-forth stalemate.

Hence, the following practical steps must be taken as part of a policy to contain the Islamist insurgents: substantially reduce troop numbers in the south and withdraw them to bases further north, where they enjoy greater support. Next, make it clear to the Karzai regime that financial aid is not unconditional, and will require granting the Afghan Parliament the right to confirm major appointments in government, allowing district councils to be elected, working for greater transparency in administrative institutions, and decentralizing the budgeting authority. Furthermore, the Afghan constitution needs to be reformed to allow provinces to elect their own governors.

More, specifically, I propose the following decentralized substructure that works more along the lines of traditional organization of Pashtun society, drawing from the example of the long and largely peaceful reign of King Zahir Shah. His 40-year rule (1933-1973) was mainly due to a strategy of co-optation of and co-operation with village society.

From each manteqa (Pashto for a self-identified, culturally uniform and shared geographic space, centered on clusters of little villages), a prominent man could be selected as a baradur ikhan (Pashto for a "heroic local leader"), endowed with permanent and indivisible federal assets, obligations and powers. The baradur ikhan could then act as a link between the central government and the qawm (Dari Persian for a dense web of frequently renegotiated solidarity networks at the local level) in each manteqa.

By providing select qawm members with federal assets requiring allegiance and owed service, life at the village level is connected much better with the decentralized substructure of the state and ultimately the centralized superstructure. In effect, a chain of personal obligations and owed service to the central government would be created from the baradur ikhan right down to his retainers in the manteqa, and, through mutual support obligations, across manteqas to other baradur ikhans. Too little is understood by outsiders regarding how the Nuristanis structure village life, but the system could well be similar to that of Pashtun society.

In addition, the ethnic base of the Afghan army needs to be broadened and become more inclusive of Pashtuns and Nuristanis. Incidentally, in some areas recently wrested from Taliban control, the implementation of a new "Afghan Local Police" (ALP) program that depends on arming the country's tribesmen and entrusting them to maintain control may be a step in the right direction.

The current errors vis-à-vis the Afghan army and police are reminiscent of the experience in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. Washington has tended to favor national forces despite the fact that most American police work is controlled at the local, not national level. Post-Saddam, the U.S. insisted that local Sunni, Shi'a and Kurdish units either disarm or be integrated into a national force, such that Shi'a forces were often placed in Sunni areas and vice-versa, in the hope that they would stop viewing themselves as tribal forces and start acting like "Iraqis." The outcome? A further contribution to the growing sectarian tensions that erupted into full-scale civil war by 2006.

Similar developments have arisen in Afghanistan. When the Taliban regime was defeated in 2001, the new Afghan government aimed to disarm the tribal forces that ousted the Taliban (designated "Afghan Militia Forces"- AMF), with 63,000 such militiamen disarmed by 2005, although it is estimated that there are still anywhere between 65,000 and 180,000 members of unofficial ethnic forces and other private armies at large. Working with these local forces is essential for any disengagement. Indeed, such successful cooperation as part of the "Afghan Public Protection Program" helped to establish security in Wardak province, once a Taliban stronghold. Why should this not be replicated elsewhere?

Now, there is still the problem of broader regional engagement that must be undertaken to have a safe exit plan, safeguard our security interests and ensure a reasonable degree of stability in Afghanistan and the surrounding area. However, within Afghanistan itself, it should be clear that a change in strategy should not have to require working towards a peace settlement with the Islamist militants operating in the country, contrary to conventional wisdom.

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