Hindu Kush Curtain Call: The End Game in Afghanistan

Posted on 18 March 2009.

As the US develops an exit strategy, the details of the peace deals are now surfacing in the media. Already there is criticism of Mr. Obama’s who has continued the policy of negotiation with the moderate Pakhtuns. There are conflicting reports in the press about the policy review underway.

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The vacillation in the message out of the White House may depict internal fissures or total confusion within the new administration. Senator Obama who many ideas about Afghanistan may now be lost in the deluge of opposing ideas from within his own administration as well in the army. Additionally, competing powers in Asia and Afghanistan’s neighbors may be furthering their own agendas. While the negotiations continue with the Pakhtuns, the USA may be banking on

KABUL, Afghanistan — Even as President Obama floated the idea of negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban, Afghan and foreign officials here said that preliminary discussions with the Taliban leadership were already under way and could be developed into more formal talks with the support of the United States.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade mujahedeen leader, in a video from February 2007.

The Afghan government has been exploring the potential for negotiations with the Taliban leadership council of Mullah Muhammad Omar and with a renegade mujahedeen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, after receiving overtures from them last year, the officials said. The proposal for talks gained additional momentum from an endorsement by Saudi Arabia and the change to a civilian government in Pakistan, both of which increased political pressure on the Taliban to compromise.

Afghan government officials and Western diplomats said the peace process might have already made greater progress if the Afghan government and the United States had pushed it more forcefully. They also said that negotiations should be expanded to a broad spectrum of Taliban leaders and that a policy of talking only to moderates was doomed to failure.

Officials with contacts within the Taliban said that the current discussions had been productive, with the government asking the Taliban to clearly reject Al Qaeda and end their attacks on schools, roads, teachers and engineers, said Arsallah Rahmani, an Afghan senator involved in the negotiations.

In return, the Taliban are demanding, among other things, an end to house searches and arrests, and the release of Taliban detainees from Afghan jails and the United States detention centers at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Bagram Air Base.

Larger issues, like the system of government and the Constitution, would come later, Mr. Rahmani said in a recent interview. “We are trying to create an atmosphere of trust so we can then meet somewhere in Afghanistan,” he said.

There has been some limited progress to date, Mr. Rahmani said, with the government releasing some detainees and the Taliban agreeing not to attack certain places. He and another member of Parliament involved in the talks, Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, said that they were waiting for President Hamid Karzai to secure guarantees of support for the process from foreign governments, in particular the United States, before they could go further.

The current discussions represent a step beyond the government’s established policy, which is supported by NATO and Afghanistan’s foreign allies, of fighting the irreconcilable elements of the Taliban while leaving the door open for those ready to accept the Constitution, disarm and return to peaceful civilian life.

Toward that end, the government has conducted a reconciliation effort that is widely regarded as corrupt and ineffective. While it has brought more than 6,000 former Taliban members to the government’s side over the years, it has failed to win the defection of any senior figures or to make a serious dent in the ranks of the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership council first approached the government about peace talks last year, a senior security adviser said, after suffering heavy battlefield casualties and seeing the election of a civilian, antimilitant government in Pakistan. The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. As U.S. Weighs Taliban Negotiations, Afghans Are Already Talking By CARLOTTA GALL, Published: March 11, 2009

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Mr. Hekmatyar, who is allied to the Taliban but not part of the movement, sent two conciliatory letters to Mr. Karzai around the same time, according to a prominent opposition leader in Parliament, Burhanuddin Rabbani, who saw the letters and gave his support to the negotiations.

Mullah Omar’s whereabouts are unknown, but Mullah Bradar, a powerful commander and deputy to Mullah Omar, is in contact with the government and is said to reside in the Pakistan port city of Karachi, where many members of the Quetta shura have taken refuge, according to Afghan officials.

Mr. Hekmatyar, a ruthless, hard-line fundamentalist known for reneging on past agreements, is widely rumored to reside in Pakistan, near the frontier city of Peshawar. His son-in-law, Ghairat Baheer, a charismatic figure in his own right, was recently released after six years of detention in Bagram, in what is seen here as a concession.

Since his communication with the government, Mr. Hekmatyar has notably softened his initial demands, asking only that foreign troops depart from the capital, Kabul, not that they leave the country entirely before negotiations start. The Afghan government is not alone in engaging the Taliban. Over the last year, organizations like the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have become increasingly open about their contacts with the Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups.

American offi
cials would not comment on negotiations with the Taliban or with Mr. Hekmatyar, except to say that they supported the five-year-old government reconciliation process. Western diplomats in Kabul said that even under the Bush administration, the United States had grown more receptive to the idea of talking to the Taliban. Nevertheless, it remains the major obstacle to full-blown peace talks, they added.

Several Western diplomats and officials in Afghanistan, including those already in contact with the Taliban, are calling for a far broader political engagement with the Taliban. They say that trying to engage moderate Taliban factions and splitting commanders or groups away from the Taliban leadership also would not work.

They say that negotiations have to be conducted with broad consultation among the Taliban leadership and through Pashtun tribal leaders and elders, since the Taliban are all ethnic Pashtun and ultimately answerable to their tribes.

The problem with the reconciliation process, officials say, is that it demanded that the Taliban lay down their arms in return for security guarantees, which they did not trust either the government to enforce or the Americans to honor.

“We make reconciliation sound like surrender; where has that ever worked?” said one Western official with long experience in Afghanistan, who did not want to be identified because of the political nature of his comments. “What is required is structured engagement with all Afghan communities, including the Pashtun and therefore representatives of the Taliban, around a new political project.”

One powerful voice supporting a broad consultation with the Afghan tribal leaders, in order to engage even the top Taliban leaders, is a presidential hopeful, Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Nangarhar Province. In an interview last week, Mr. Shirzai, who has worked closely with United States forces in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban, said the Afghan people were desperate for new leadership and above all peace.

“Peace is the priority,” he said. “We have capable people who are patriotic, who can work on this and persuade the Taliban to come to talk.”

A leader of the powerful Barakzai tribe, Mr. Shirzai said a strong military stance must be accompanied by a determined effort to unite the Pashtun tribes in the interests of peace.

“The most important thing is tribal unity, and when we make that, we will be the most powerful. We will have an army of 10 million with us.” As U.S. Weighs Taliban Negotiations, Afghans Are Already Talking By CARLOTTA GALL, Published: March 11, 2009

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