Talking with the Taliban

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Tim Lister

Over the weekend, the White House point man on Afghanistan stressed the United States was NOT talking with the Taliban. But Richard Holbrooke, a veteran mediator of the wars in the Balkans, chose his words precisely.  "I want to state very clearly that our nation is not involved in any direct contacts with the Taliban," he said at a security conference in Munich, Germany.

The operational word being "direct." There are plenty of back channels for sounding out the Taliban – or at least some of them. The United States has encouraged Saudi Arabia (one of the few states that recognized the Taliban when they were in power) to open a dialog with more moderate members of the Taliban. But the Saudis have their own conditions – the Taliban must disown al Qaeda, which in the form of its Saudi-born mastermind Osama bin Laden has brought the Kingdom so much pain and embarrassment. The UN's special envoy to Afghanistan has also met low-level Taliban representatives in Dubai.

Holbrooke acknowledged this and was comfortable with it. So was British Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth. "We mustn't raise that bar too high in terms of our preparedness to bring people in," he said. "Neither should we wait until there is real victory before we try to reconcile or reintegrate those elements in the insurgency who are prepared to come across."

But the obstacles are many and formidable. First, and most obviously, why should the Taliban want to talk? They have expanded their presence to almost every part of Afghanistan (even US officials admit they have "shadow-governors" in 33 of the 34 Afghan provinces.) They launched more attacks on allied forces and the Afghan security forces in 2009 than in any year since being ousted at the end of 2001; their IED attacks have become more sophisticated and devastating. The UN estimates there were an average of 1,200 attacks a month last year by Taliban or other insurgents – a 65 percent increase from the previous year.

But the Taliban are still essentially a "rural" force, unable to hold towns or cities. Some commentators believe they have achieved as much as they can on the battlefield. And there is battle fatigue. "Let's not forget that they've been in this conflict zone for over three decades", said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistani Foreign Minister. "They want a normal life. And if you can provide them an alternative, I think many of them would want to engage."

Qureshi should know. Pakistan, after all, is the other major player that helped establish Taliban control over Afghanistan in the late 1990s, and still sees itself as the “gatekeeper” to the Taliban. And Pakistan may be the second obstacle to a deal in Afghanistan. Its Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI retains close contacts with the Afghan Taliban, as a "bargaining chip" in Islamabad’s competition with India for influence in Afghanistan. But the ISI is loathed by the Afghan government and widely distrusted by US intelligence professionals. There is evidence that some ISI officers have been involved in supporting Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The calculation for the Pakistanis is whether the Taliban’s value in keeping Afghanistan out of India's "orbit" is more useful than their relationship with the United States and a political settlement in Afghanistan.

Third – who to talk to? Do the Western allies and the Karzai government try to peel off mid-level figures who may be fighting as much for the pay as out of Islamist zeal? And at the same time do they try to isolate the senior leadership, the likes of Mullah Omar, thought to be holed up in or around Quetta in Pakistan? And how reliable and effective would the Karzai government be in reintegrating Taliban into the military and resettling their families? There are differing opinions throughout Washington and among the allies about how to manage the reconciliation process. And there is also the risk for the Obama Administration of being accused of being 'soft' on terrorists. Sen. John McCain – speaking at the same conference as Richard Holbrooke over the weekend, said: "You can't put reconciliation ahead of success, because if the enemy is going to believe he's going to succeed, he's not going to reconcile."

Much hinges on the success of the military campaign now evolving in Helmand province, as US and UK forces gear up for a much-advertised offensive to drive the Taliban from the town of Marjah. It is the insurgents' last urban redoubt in the volatile southern province. But if the Taliban avoid heavy losses and indeed inflict significant casualties on the allies, and if the Afghan National Army performs poorly, the Taliban leadership may well conclude that it can outlast the foreign presence. They won't be the first Afghans in history to come to that conclusion.