Another reason for 2011

By Steve Coll Monday, December 7, 2009 - 5:07 PM Share

By Steve Coll

I have a new post on my New Yorker blog about negotiations with the Taliban.

Of all the messages in President Obama’s Afghanistan speech last week (a speech with so many messages that it sounded like a chorale, and not a particularly harmonious one), one of the least remarked upon was a passing reference to efforts by Afghanistan’s government to negotiate a settlement with elements of the Taliban. “We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens,” Obama said.

Over the next eighteen months, we can probably expect three levels of American-backed political engagement with Taliban elements, in parallel to military and governance efforts. The least strategic and the least controversial will be a British-led plan to encourage defections by individual Taliban soldiers and commanders, who will be induced to change sides with money and employment-training programs. In addition, district-by-district and province-by-province, American and Afghan commanders will reach out opportunistically to Taliban commanders, as conditions permit, in the hope that promises of money and autonomy might “freeze” some of them in place as home-guard militias, a la the Sons of Iraq program. Finally, and most controversially, there will probably be efforts to renew the aborted Saudi-led negotiations with Taliban leaders around Mullah Omar, which were conceived as a strategic initiative to engage the Taliban in talks that might eventually draw them into a national political settlement in exchange for a time-bound American withdrawal plan. Hamid Karzai has expressed an interest in such negotiations, although his record of succeeding in such talks, dating back to the nineteen-nineties, is not very strong. If achievable, such a settlement could certainly be desirable, if it left behind an Afghan government and army strong enough to defend the country from Al Qaeda and like groups. Such a settlement would be more durable still if it were linked to or coincided with improved relations between India and Pakistan.

To read the rest, visit Think Tank.

Steve Coll is the president of the New America Foundation and a staff writer at The New Yorker.

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7:35 PM ET

December 7, 2009

clarification

Steve,

Perhaps a clarification is in order.

My understanding (and it may be outdated) is that the Afghan Taliban is largely a proxy of the Pakistani ISI. Even though they do have a history of differing, which usually manifests over issues of when and if to 'stand down' in a conflict (witness the 1990s).

The TTP, then, being those disaffected and Al Qaeda-inspired Pakistanis that want an Emirate in Pakistan and to exact revenge over drone strikes, shelling etc.

Also within the Pakistani side there are those that are still Pro Pakistan (called 'local' Taliban), but fighting NATO in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as TTP - on behalf of the Pakistanis.

That being the case, isn't the deal that really needs to be made that of pacifying the India-hawks in Pakistan? Then we can truly move on to their proxies in the Afghan Taliban.

Or are we and Karzai trying to lure the Afghan Taliban away from their patrons in Pakistan?

Finally, perhaps I'm not aware of additional instances, but the theory that lower level Taliban commanders can be bribed off is rooted in the pre-election campaign strategy of Hamid Karzai. Is he basing this optimistic interpretation about the cracks in the Taliban movement simply on the fact that provincial commanders allowed his election to occur without much bloodshed? If so, isn't the whole notion of 'buying them off' into non-existence a little foolhardy? Where are the other examples?