Hamid Karzai has for years said that reconciliation with the insurgent groups would be necessary for the future of his country. The United States who was instrumental in ousting the Taliban in 2001 refused any rapprochement with those it viewed as threatening its national security. The Karzai government never had strong enough incentives to follow up on its idea because the US was interposed between them and their enemies.
But now, Gen McChrystal, who has said in the past that the US cannot “kill its way to victory” in Afghanistan went further by floating the idea that some Taliban may be allowed to join a future Afghani government. This would follow a period of diplomatic negotiations between the parties. Gen McChrystal’s boss defense secretary Robert Gates has also recently stated the Taliban was part of Afghanistan’s “political fabric”.
These are steps in the right direction. The political situation in Afghanistan will not be resolved by national elections, but by first giving official recognition to regional blocs of interests. This blocks can then be allowed to enter into negotiations to share power and determine the right levels of autonomy in a federative state. Without a doubt, that must include the people siding with the Taliban and similar groups.
This is a sound strategy because to defeat an insurgency, you must take away their reasons to fight which is. Immediately, for a large segment of discontent Pashtuns, this is a lack of representation in the politics of their country and a right to self-determination in their ancestral lands.
One such group, Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami, which operates independently from the Taliban but has far reaching control and influence in three provinces in the east – has publicly stated that they would be amenable to negotiations. This is a sign that negotiations are possible and a case where the leader is ripe for reconciliation.
On the other hand Haqqani, the leader of the most important Taliban network aimed against Afghanistan but operating out of North Waziristan, Pakistan, recently said of the recent attack on Kabul that it was his group’s response to Karzai’s overture for negotiations.
Yet, even when leadership is not ready to lay down the arms and parley we must assume that there are pragmatic forces within these groups that would abandon and renounce the hard line adopted by their leaders if given the right incentives.
This is a valid assumption because the Taliban are people too, and like you and me, can respond to more material concerns and have the capacity to move away from impossible ideologies. The extremism in their organization comes from the top. David Rhodes gave us a glimpse of that in his report on his seven month captivity. He said that whenever the leaders weren’t around his captors attitude would relax, but when the leaders came back the discussions turned ideological and attitudes turned more stringent.
This is because any group needs an ideology upon which members can agree and coalesce. And it is often incumbent upon the leaders to remind its members their purpose and in this case why they are fighting. The maintenance of the group depends on the leader’s ability to continue to attract new members - in this case radicalized youth coming from all over the Muslim world to do jihad, or homegrown Pashtuns whose land were invaded.
The leaders often come to be much more extremist than any of their members, sometimes developing megalomania or at least a sense of grandeur and historical purpose that sets them apart. You do get a feeling in the Bin Ladden or Haqqani videos that they believe they are holy men fighting a holy war. This isn’t new, and many individuals throughout history either involved in desperate causes or wielding immense power have showed similar traits such as emperors or religious martyrs.
But take away their base - or their base’s reason to fight - and recruits will stop coming. From a Muslim jihadist’s point of view, this is the harm done to its flock by outsiders, the invasion of their land, and the destruction of their way of life. But from a Pashtun point of view, this is simply a denial of political representation and autonomy in their homeland.
Therefore, keeping the door for negotiations is an important new aspect of the US strategy that would at least address the Pashtuns’ more immediate needs.
Gen McChrystal justified his new intent by saying that “as a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting”. After years of conflict this has a certain amount of truth. But in fact, the door should have been kept opened since 2002 after the Taliban was soundly defeated. Instead, the Bush Manichean view of the world seems to have dictated the purpose and actions of US actors in foreign land framed in the extremist “War on Terror”. Intransigent action calls for an answer in kind and Bushism found its match.
Opening the door to insurgents for negotiations is important because the following tactical military truth is also a sound strategic principle: a cornered enemy will fight to the end. If you completely and cordon off all escape routes, your target will have no choice but to fight to the death. The escape route for the Taliban and the Pashtun as a whole is a greater role in their government and a greater right to autonomous self determination amongst their tribes on their turf.
The lead role in this endeavor will have to be the Afghan central government, the northern factions that support and constitute it, and other already won over Pashtun groups. While this is taking place, a bold and accelerated turn over of military tasks will have to take place to put – literally – Afghan skin in the game. These tasks will be best served by local groups tied to tribes, militias and regional commanders within the Pashtun areas who are more likely to effectively deal with the insurgents amongst them than the Afghan Army can. This will also allow the natural political channels and basic political units of the country – the tribes in the Pashtun lands – to express themselves. These local groups will ultimately, through coalitions and political consolidation, be the ones who will broker power with the central government and the other national regional blocks – the other Pashtun groups, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, etc.
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