International DevelopmentWritten evidence submitted by David Loyn, BBC Afghanistan and Development Correspondent
I was asked by Richard Burden to add some detail to my comments about the possibility of a political solution—“reconciliation” with the Taliban.
To briefly sketch out the history: it has now more become widely accepted that it was a mistake to exclude the Taliban from the post 9/11 political settlement. Lakhdar Brahimi—one of the architects of the Bonn process in 2001–02 certainly now believes that the Taliban should have been at the table, and an attempt made to forge a more inclusive settlement.
Until 2006 neither the Kabul government nor most of those involved in the US-led international effort to stabilise the country believed that there was any need to engage with the Taliban. Attempts made by senior “ex-members” of the Taliban to forge links between their former comrades now in Quetta and the Afghan government were rebuffed by the government.
President Karzai talked frequently about the need to bring the Taliban back into the Afghan mainstream, but his intelligence service, the NDS, ensured that attempts to broker deals were stifled, and an EU/UK peace initiative ended when the two officials working on it in Helmand were expelled from Afghanistan on the orders of President Karzai on Christmas Day 2007.
After Richard Holbrooke was appointed in January 2009 to coordinate US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, he launched a new impetus to seek a political dialogue with the Taliban, but the US was starting from scratch. Public demonization of the Taliban had never been allied with quiet diplomacy. The US had not done any spade-work, of the sort that had been done, for example by MI5, to forge links with the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s.
The nadir came in November 2010 when CIA officials were persuaded by a shopkeeper in Quetta to hand over several thousand dollars in the belief that he was a senior Taliban figure who would broker a peace. Holbrooke died just a few weeks later.
All attempts to secure dialogue had faced the obstacle of three preconditions—agreed by President Karzai and the international community: that the Taliban should accept the Afghan constitution, renounce violence, and sever all links with al-Qaeda. In varying degrees these were unacceptable to the Taliban leadership.
On 18 February 2011, the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signalled an important shift in policy. The three conditions were still said to be “red lines”, but now they were no longer preconditions, but to be treated as “necessary outcomes of any negotiation.” It was a formulation she would repeat often in speeches and interviews. The aim was to remove obstacles to talks. Significant “ex-Taliban” leaders living openly in Afghanistan were taken off the UN blacklist, enabling them to fly, and Qatar agreed to host a political office for the Taliban.
The stage was set. But when talks actually started, they quickly foundered as US negotiators went too fast, did not attempt to build trust, and swiftly resorted to the three conditions. The Taliban had agreed to enter talks on the understanding that they would only be about prisoner exchanges. A more nuanced negotiating style on the part of the US team might have used that to keep channels open and move on. But US impatience caused the Taliban to pull out, confused by what they were hearing—confused too over mixed messages as the war did not only go on, but went up a gear with a surge of troops.
Again—the lesson from Northern Ireland was that talks might continue while the conflict went on, providing both sides had built trust.
Although Taliban negotiators continue to want to talk—appearing for example on the margins of the recent Tokyo conference—the clumsy stance of the US team closed down the most promising track. The UK, Turkey and Germany have all made their own contacts and are attempting to restore a political process, but as so often in the international project in Afghanistan since 2001, good intentions do not make a coordinated policy.
The risks of not securing a peace settlement with the Taliban are obvious. And there are other risks too. Attrition of their command structure through targeted attacks in the last two years has reduced their capacity to command forces so that a new generation of leaders have emerged with even fewer scruples, less allegiance to the Quetta Shura, and more links to an international jihadi agenda. This makes the post-2014 landscape far more risky.
Reducing recruitment to insurgents will come through education, the rule of law and job opportunities for a country with a very young demographic. The importance of good governance, an end to government corruption and delivering security through economic development have never been greater.
July 2012