Talking to the Taliban

Way back in September, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there were few cool heads in the United States, a country bent on bloodthirsty revenge and intent on launching a War on Terror. But some of those cool heads, the few and the isolated, urged that the United States try talking to the Taliban first. The idea was that with the right combination of incentives and threats, and by aligning Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the effort, Washington might have been able to persuade the Taliban to hand over Al Qaeda's top leadership, including Osama bin Laden. Certainly, Saudi and Pakistani leaders preferred that option. Although the United States tried, halfheartedly, to do so -- and was rebuffed by Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader -- it never really gave it a shot. Within weeks, war had started.

The idea of talking to the Taliban is back on the table.

People with a memory longer than a few years will recall that in the 1990s, the Taliban appeared to be a Western-friendly outfit, and none other than Zalmay Khalilzad wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post praising the Taliban as moderate. (That would be the same Khalilzad who later became US ambassador to post-Taliban Afghanistan and who has dropped hints about running for president of Afghanistan this year, though his candidacy seems ludicrous and unlikely.)

Over the weekend, President Obama lent his voice to the chorus of US officials who've raised the idea that elements of the Taliban might be open to reconciliation. In the full-text transcript of Obama's interview with the New York Times, Obama was asked if the United States is "winning" in Afghanistan, and he replied: "No." Here's the key exchange:

Q. Do you see a time when you might be willing to reach out to more moderate elements of the Taliban, to try to peel them away, towards reconciliation?

A. I don't want to pre-judge the review that's currently taking place. If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region. But the situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex. You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, so figuring all that out is going to be a much more of a challenge.

Now, let's leave aside the fact that Obama got the Iraq story exactly backwards. In Iraq, the United States did not reach out to "Islamic fundamentalists" but to mostly secular, often corrupt, and fiercely nationalist Sunni tribal leaders who formed Iraq's Awakening. Very few of them were even religious, never mind fundamentalists. (In Iraq, the Sunni fundamentalists are part of the Iraqi government, in the form of the Iraqi Islamic Party and its allies, and the IIP was bitterly opposed by the Awakening.) Though it's worrying that Obama was so wrong about Iraq in that regard, he's starting down the right path by raising to the presidential level the notion of talking the Taliban.

To be sure, "the Taliban" is a very complex phenomenon. The insurgency in Afghanistan includes the Taliban, a neo-Taliban movement, scores of tribal, subtribal, and clan leaders who are variously allied with or subservient to the Taliban, local mafias, criminal gangs, warlords, and others. Mostly Pashtun, it is a movement that definitely can be talked to. President Karzai has openly discussed talking to everyone from Mullah Omar to local pro-Taliban chieftains and commanders, and for at least two years -- and possibly longer -- he's been engaged in direct contacts. The highest profile such contacts came late last year, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hosted a dialogue involving former Taliban leaders, Karzai's brother, and Nawaz Sharif, a top politician in Pakistan. According to my sources, members of the Taliban's inner shura ("council") from Quetta, Pakistan, took part in the talks.

Karzai immediately endorsed Obama's call for talks, even though various analysts pooh-poohed the idea of negotiations, including Afghan opposition figures. (It's important to note that many opposition figures in Afghanistan come from the non-Pashtun, former Northern Alliance, while Karzai stems from a prominent Pashtun family. The Taliban is overwhelmingly Pashtun, and ethnic Pashtuns make up half of Afghanistan's population.)

Critics argue (1) that Karzai's offers to talk to the Taliban have produced nothing, and (2) that the Taliban won't negotiate seriously as long as it believes it is winning. Well. Perhaps if the United States explicitly endorsed Karzai's effort to talk to the Taliban, and worked closely with Saudi and Pakistani officials to move them along, it might help things. It might not produce immediate results, but what's the hurry? It isn't as if the Taliban-led insurgency is about to conquer Kabul and defeat the occupation.

As for the argument that the Taliban won't talk as long as it's winning, that's a proposition that has yet to be tested.

It's possible that Obama's ongoing review, set to be completed this month, will call for stepped-up negotiations. The fact that the State Department and Richard Holbrooke, have involved people like Vali Nasr and Barnett Rubin in the process is a good sign. According to one report, Rubin has been given the portfolio of dealing with the Taliban:

The architect of Mr Obama's "smarter policy" is Richard Holbrooke, a former US envoy to the United Nations who has appointed Afghan policy expert Barnett Rubin to co-ordinate an approach to the Taliban.

In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine in December, Mr Rubin proposed a "grand bargain" in which NATO would end military action if the Taliban agreed "to prohibit the use of Afghan (or Pakistani) territory for international terrorism". Such an agreement would "constitute a strategic defeat for al-Qaeda", he wrote.

Of course, many of Obama's advisers believe that first we have to batter the insurgency militarily, secure certain provinces south and east of Kabul, and then talk. And when Obama's military advisers speak about "talking" to the Taliban, they mean talking to low-level, local leaders at the grassroots level, village by village. And they propose doing so against the backdrop of an escalating military confrontation. More likely than not, a heavier US footprint in Afghanistan's tribal regions will help recruit fighters for the Taliban and inflame ethnic Pashtun nationalism.

Make no mistake. The Taliban are an ugly phenomenon. They are despised in Afghanistan, with upwards of 90 percent of Afghans viewing them with disdain. But it's precisely that weakness, not the Taliban's alleged strength, that must be exploited. The process of talking to them will be ugly, too, as shown by Pakistan's recent accord in the Swat Valley, a settled (i.e., non-tribal) area in the Northwest Frontier Province, where Pakistan made a deal with a local fundamentalist cleric whose son-in-law operates as an ally of the Taliban. Various US officials have condemned the Swat arrangement, but I'd say that we're likely to be doing the same thing in Afghanistan, sooner rather than later, if there's an exit strategy at all.

Comments (22)

1. Wow, the likelyhood of the Taliban leadership talking to the US is the same as the Iranian Mullahs inviting the US to a Texas-style BBQ.

   Posted by ACook at 03/09/2009 @ 12:19pm

2. If the US can talk its way out of Afghanistan -- fully out -- & soon, and if the US pulls fully out of Iraq before '12, Obama will be have no realistic competition in '12.

   But he faces as many obstacles at home as he does in Afghanistan ... with the Pentagon & its suppliers, with AIPAC & its funders, & with the oil industry. The same gang that got us into these foreign adventures.

   Posted by sloper at 03/09/2009 @ 12:33pm

3. Posted by ACook at 03/09/2009 @ 12:19pm

   Uh, ACOOK, actually before Iraq, the Iranians were HELPING us in Afghanistan because they didn't like the Taliban either.

   Posted by Mask at 03/09/2009 @ 12:33pm

4. But am a little confused, Mr Dreyfuss...

   aren't you the one who keeps telling us the Taliban are NOW a "more moderate Taliban" and more amicable to negotiations?

   If so...wouldn't that mean that BEFORE they were a "less moderate, less amicable-to-negotiations" version???

   Posted by Mask at 03/09/2009 @ 12:35pm

5. There is no reason to talk to the taliban. They have nothing to offer, and we can't give them what they want.

   Posted by Extraneous at 03/09/2009 @ 12:38pm

6. Mask, in the Taliban -- as in any movement -- there are radicals, moderates, conservatives, pragmatists, etc. My point is, so far we haven't even begun to find out which is which. On top of that, many current allies of the Taliban (in Afghanistan) are amenable to switching sides. Again, we've hardly tried to get them to do so. As the piece above makes clear, Barnett Rubin seems to think that an end to US-NATO military action in exchange for the Taliban's refusal to allow Al Qaeda to reestablish itself is an idea that might work. And again, we haven't tried that route.

   Posted by RobertDreyfuss at 03/09/2009 @ 12:47pm

7. Talking is important, but nation-building that undermines Taliban "economic power" is the key. The Taliban used to be against opium production, but now considers it as the key in funding insurgency.

   With careful crop-substitution efforts, Afghanistan can survive (and even thrive) without opium. With its dry and warm climate, Jatropha plantations should be considered, as this is a superior non-food stuff based biofuel that has even better technical properties than the jet fuel used today.

   Air New Zealand has test-flown a plane recently using 100% Jatropha oil in one of the two engines, and that engine did better than the fossil fuel driven engine. It has a lower freezing point than jet fuel, allowing for higher altitude flights, and a higher flash point for fire which makes it safer. It has no sulfur, and much lower carbon emissions than fossil fuel.

   Posted by Metteyya at 03/09/2009 @ 1:05pm

8. Posted by RobertDreyfuss at 03/09/2009 @ 12:47pm

   But, Mr Dreyfuss, the point remains.

   You are saying we should have negotiated back in 2001...when the Taliban controlled ALL of Afghanistan, burkhas were enforced, soccer fields execution grounds, and they held all the cards.

   And you tell also tell us that there are "moderate elements" in the Taliban (a claim YOU have made, yet now say "we haven't even begun to find out which is which...if so, how do you know they even exist???) that can be negotiated with.

   Which seems to indicate that these moderate Taliban are a relatively NEW phenomenon...not one that existed back in 2001.

   BTW, as I have stated before, we WILL negotiate our way out of this. Nobody, even a good deal of the neo-cons, want to stay there beyond 2012.

   Posted by Mask at 03/09/2009 @ 1:26pm

9. "There is no reason to talk to the taliban. They have nothing to offer, and we can't give them what they want.

   Posted by Extraneous at 03/09/2009 @ 12:38pm

   Maybe they could root out Bin Laden in exchange,or sell him out ...and they could join the 21 st century man with pre conditions...like human rights, no beheadings, and no opium for starters.

   Worth checking out...and where ever they fail to do so we threaten drones and carpet destruction. They will understand demanding from a postion of power...

   even if yhose here do not.

   Posted by YourJomamma at 03/09/2009 @ 3:03pm

10. Yeah, maybe the Taliban could root out Bin Laden. Of course they have previously taken the position that they would rather be invaded by the US than do so.

    Posted by rplzak at 03/09/2009 @ 3:47pm

11. If we talked to the Taliban it would undermine their sole purpose for existing. To keep the American people fearful, dependent and reliant on our government leadership.

    The Taliban is a crisis too good for our federal government to waste. Didn't Dreyfuss get the memo?

    Posted by freiheit1 at 03/09/2009 @ 5:24pm

12. Taliban, an ugly phenomenon? Suppose so, but then so are a lot of others, and ugly or not, the US no more belongs there than the Soviets did before. If anyone will clap down on Al Qaeda, it will be the Pashtuns themselves and likely after NATO leaves.

    Still better to talk about leaving or arrangement like in Swat than sending in troops in mass....

    Charlie M.

    Posted by cmsandia at 03/09/2009 @ 5:34pm

13. Yeah, maybe the Taliban could root out Bin Laden. Of course they have previously taken the position that they would rather be invaded by the US than do so.

    Posted by rplzak at 03/09/2009 @ 3:47pm

    Yes, they have. And NATO.

    Posted by YourJomamma at 03/09/2009 @ 6:39pm

14. The piece has some points. But Jesus Christ! What purpose does it serve in the first sentence to condemn America immediately after 9/11 as "a country bent on bloodthirsty revenge?"

    Are you hellbent against getting your message across to anyone outside your little Amen corner?

    If "cool heads" were so hard to find, I guess you couldn't possibly have found them at the recruiter offices. Nothing but bloodthirsty vermin there.

    Let's skip the "support the troops, not the war" crap, and extract the wolfpack, get 'em into resensitization camps.

    Posted by gangpapist at 03/09/2009 @ 7:08pm

15. "Still better to talk about leaving or arrangement like in Swat than sending in troops in mass.... Charlie M."

    Yes and look at how well that has worked out. No sooner had Pakistan surrendered the Swat, than another chapter of those moderate mujaheddin shot up a busload of cricketers in a different province. It seems that nothing succeeds like success, so if terrorism proves successful, then there's no reason to suspect that it will ever stop.

    Posted by JeTed at 03/09/2009 @ 10:47pm

16. A moderate Taliban? If they ever existed, they left the stage long ago. These are the same furry little bastards that blew up the giant 2500 yr old Budda statues just prior to 9-11 because they "represented" non Islamic "stuff". No talks are feasible or possible.

    Posted by pyeatte at 03/09/2009 @ 11:01pm

17. Wow, the likelyhood of the Taliban leadership talking to the US is the same as the Iranian Mullahs inviting the US to a Texas-style BBQ.

    Posted by ACook at 03/09/2009 @ 12:19pm

    LLLLOOOOLLLLLLLLL!

    oh, darling, that is just too funny:

    Thursday, December 4, 1997 Published at 19:27 GMT BBC

    World: West Asia

    Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline

    A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

    A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 03/10/2009 @ 12:08am

18. Snowballs chance and Hell will figure prominently in the U.S.A. talks with the taliban! Problem is the taliban only speaks 7.62mm in its talks.

    Posted by comancheamerican at 03/10/2009 @ 12:21am

19. Comanche,

    7.62 mm is a nice language for responding to jihadists. But I prefer 25 mike mike.

    Posted by gangpapist at 03/10/2009 @ 12:31am

20. Dreyfuss's point is that talking with the Taliban is for us an unknown "road not taken," at least one not taken by us in Afghanistan since 2001. But we should reconsider this road.

    This view is completely in line with that of Fareed Zakaria, who concludes his article of March 9, 2009 in NEWSWEEK as follows:

    "The veil is not the same as the suicide belt. We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. In the end, time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim country. Wherever it is tried – in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan – people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do. That's the most powerful weapon of all."

    Let's talk. What are we afraid of? The strongest weapon the other side has ever wielded has always been shirts soaked with blood that we have shed, believing that this was all we could do. It isn't, and it probably never was.

    At any rate, you cannot send a clear message only with sticks. You have to use carrots as well. I believe Metteyya has excellent proposals in this regard.

    Posted by JakobFabian at 03/10/2009 @ 07:38am

21. When it comes to the issues of the global politics and the way it is perceived by the masses, a lot of things can be viewed as half-truth or false information wrapped into shiny paper to attract the attention and make people look away from the real problems. Unfortunately, most of us read only the headlines, and don't pay attention to what is really going on in the places like Africa, Gaza strip or the Balkans www.theageofnepotism.com

    Posted by nikolina at 03/10/2009 @ 5:02pm

22. When it comes to the issues of the global politics and the way it is perceived by the masses, a lot of things can be viewed as half-truth or false information wrapped into shiny paper to attract the attention and make people look away from the real problems. Unfortunately, most of us read only the headlines, and don't pay attention to what is really going on in the places like Africa, Gaza strip or the Balkans www.theageofnepotism.com

    Posted by nikolina at 03/10/2009 @ 5:04pm