TALKS
by COMMENT
U.S.-TALIBAN Steve Coll
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
O
n August 22, 1998, Mullah Omar, the emir of
Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, made a cold call to the
State Department. The United States had just lobbed
cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps in his nation. Omar got
a mid-level diplomat on the line and spoke calmly. He
suggested that Congress force President Bill Clinton to
resign. He said that American military strikes would be
counter-productive, and would spark more, not less,
terrorist attacks, according to a declassified record of the
call. Omar emphasized that this was his best advice, the
record adds.
That was the first and last time that Omar spoke to an
American government official, as far as is known. Before September 11th, some of his deputies had
occasionally spoken with U.S. diplomats, but afterward the United States rejected direct talks with
Taliban leaders, on the ground that they were as much to blame for terrorism as Al Qaeda was. Last
year, however, as the U.S.-led Afghan ground war passed its ninth anniversary, and Mullah Omar
remained in hiding, presumably in Pakistan, a small number of officials in the Obama Administration
among them the late Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
argued that it was time to try talking to the Taliban again.
Holbrookes final diplomatic achievement, it turns out, was to see this advice accepted. The
Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several
people briefed about the talks told me last week. The discussions are continuing; they are of an
exploratory nature and do not yet amount to a peace negotiation. That may take some time: the first
secret talks between the United States and representatives of North Vietnam took place in 1968; the
Paris Peace Accords, intended to end direct U.S. military involvement in the war, were not agreed on
until 1973.
When asked for comment on the talks, a White House spokesman said that the remarks that
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made last Friday at the Asia Society offered a thorough
representation of the U.S. position. Clinton had tough words for the Taliban, saying that they were
confronted with a choice between political compromise and ostracism as an enemy of the
international community. She added, I know that reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal
as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to
talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace. President Reagan understood that when he sat
down with the Soviets. And Richard Holbrooke made this his lifes work. He negotiated face to face
with Milosevic and ended a war.
Mullah Omar is not a participant in the preliminary talks. He does not attend even secret meetings
of underground Taliban leadership councils in Pakistani safe houses. When he does speak, he does so
obliquely, via cassette tapes. One purpose of the talks initiated by the Obama Administration,
therefore, is to assess which figures in the Talibans leadership, if any, might be willing to engage in
formal Afghan peace negotiations, and under what conditions.
Obamas war advisers previously made it clear that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, must lead
any high-level peace or reconciliation process involving Taliban leaders, and, since 2008, Karzai
has carried out sporadic talks with current and former Taliban, occasionally aided by Saudi Arabia, but
to no end. Last summer, the Afghan governments attempts produced a farcical con, when a man
posed as a senior Taliban leader and fleeced his handlers for cash. The recent American talks are
intended to prime more successful and durable negotiations led by Karzai. The United States would
play a supporting role in these negotiations, and might join them to discuss the status of Taliban
prisoners in U.S. custody or the future of international forces in Afghanistan. For the United States,
the overarching goal of such negotiations would be to persuade at least some important Taliban
leaders to break with Al Qaeda, leave the battlefield, and participate in Afghan electoral politics,
without touching off violence by anti-Taliban groups or gutting the rights enjoyed by minorities and
women.
Although the Talibans record is nothing like Al Qaedas, they have aided international terrorism;
in 2000, for example, they facilitated the escape of the murderous hijackers of an Indian Airlines
passenger plane. As Hillary Clinton indicated, the morality of talking to them at all, given their history
of violence and repression, is debated within the Administration, as it is within the Afghan
government. But in both countries there is also hope for an honorable path to end the war.
The pursuit of peace, however, can be just as risky as the prosecution of war. If mismanaged, fullblown Afghan peace talks might ignite a civil war along ethnic lines. (The Taliban draw their support
from Afghanistans Pashtuns; the most vehement anti-Taliban militias are non-Pashtun.) Also, the
Taliban and their historical benefactors in Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, spy
agency the directed by the Pakistani military, have an almost unblemished record of overreaching in
Afghan affairs, by funding and arming client militias, and there is no reason to think that their habits
would change if serious negotiations unfolded. And, even under the best of circumstances, an Afghan
peace process would most likely mirror the present character of the war: a slow, complicated, and
deathly grind, atomized and menaced by interference from neighboring governmentsnot just
Pakistans but also those of Iran, India, Russia, Uzbekistan, and China.
The Taliban today are diverse and fractured. Some old-school leaders, who served in Mullah
Omars cabinet or as governors during the nineteen-nineties, belong to a council known as the Quetta
Shura, named for the Pakistani city in which many Taliban have enjoyed sanctuary since 2001. This is
the group whose members are thought to be most ready to consider coming in from the cold. Other
factions, such as the Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan, which has long-standing ties to the
I.S.I., are regarded as more malicious and more susceptible to Pakistans control. Inside Afghanistan,
young Taliban commanders fight locally and often viciously, oblivious of international diplomacy.
Yalta this is not.
Nonetheless, the Obama Administration has understandably concluded that the status quo is
untenable. The war has devolved into a strategic stalemate: urban Afghan populations enjoy
reasonable security, millions of schoolgirls are back in class, Al Qaeda cannot operate, and the Taliban
cannot return to power, yet in the provinces ethnic militias and criminal gangs still husband weapons,
cadge international funds, and exploit the weak. Neither the United States nor the Taliban can achieve
its stated aims by arms alone, and the Administration lacks a sure way to preserve the gains made
while reducing its military presence, as it must, for fiscal, political, and many other reasons.
If giving peace talks a chance can decrease the violence and shrink the Afghan battlefield by
twenty or even ten per cent, President Obama will have calculated correctly: even a partly successful
negotiation might help create political conditions that favor the reduction of American forces to a
more sustainable level. A Taliban-endorsed ceasefire, to build confidence around long-term talks
supported by many international governments, might also be conceivable.
L
ast spring, in Kabul, several former Taliban leaders told me that some exiled senior Taliban in
Pakistan wanted the United States to leave Afghanistan but, at the same time, they preferred to
talk with the Americans directly about the countrys future, both to escape I.S.I. manipulation and
because they regarded Karzai as a weak puppet. As long as the Obama Administration refused to join
in the talks, progress would be impossible, they told me. Its just the Americans, Mullah Abdul
Salam Zaeef, the Talibans former ambassador to Pakistan, said. They are not ready to make positive
progress.
At that point, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and military commanders, such as Admiral Michael
Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that Obamas surge of troops needed more
time to inflict morale-sapping damage on the Taliban; their theory was that Taliban leaders would take
peace talks seriously only when they felt sufficiently battered. Last year, American-led forces killed or
captured scores of mid-level Taliban commanders. General David Petraeus said recently that
counterinsurgency efforts in the Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces had pushed
the guerrillas back. It was these perceived military gains that influenced the Administrations decision
to enter into direct talks.
Confidentiality has its place in statecraft, and if Afghanistans war is to be resolved it will require
some quiet dealmaking, but there is something unsavory about secret talks as a mechanism for drawing
the Taliban into politics. Afghanistan has suffered heavily enough from the covert designs of outside
powers. Negotiations with the Taliban must eventually be transparent, so that the Afghans themselves
can examine them. And more than a deal with Taliban leaders will be called for. American efforts to
calm the violence will succeed only if they are part of a broader strategy in Afghanistan and South
Asia, one that gives priority to economic development, energy links, water, and regional peacemaking,
including in the conflict between India and Pakistan.
It is past time for the United States to shift some of its capacity for risk-taking in the war off the
battlefield and into diplomacy aimed at reinforcing Afghan political unity, neutrality, civil rights, and
social cohesion. The recent talks are nevertheless a constructive step. For too long, American political
strategy in Afghanistan has been subordinate to military and intelligence operations. Thinking and
learning through principled discussions with an enemy is an opportunity, not a trap. !
ILLUSTRATION: TOM BACHTELL
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