Dr Maleeha Lodhi
A number of recent developments indicate that the US may be shifting the focus of its Afghanistan strategy by stepping up diplomacy to get serious talks going with the Taliban. This could herald a quickening in the pace of Afghan reconciliation efforts aimed at securing a negotiated solution of the decade long war.
This does not yet signify an end to the contradictions in US policy reflected in its “fight, talk and build” stance. Nor does it imply that a political approach is taking precedence in the strategy. The Pentagon is not about to de-escalate fighting or scale back kinetic operations.
What they point to is President Barack Obama’s keenness to show measurable progress in moving towards his Afghan goals by the time a milestone Nato summit convenes in Chicago in May. That means presenting a realistic plan to wind down a war that is both unpopular at home and unsustainable at a time of severe fiscal strain.
Three developments are noteworthy. One, remarks by Vice President Joe Biden in an interview last month in which he declared that “the Taliban per se is not an enemy” of the United States. He also claimed that President Obama never once said that “the Taliban is our enemy” in any policy assertion. Afghan President Hamid Karzai promptly welcomed this as a step towards peace.
Biden’s remarks went further than any previous US statement and marked the formal reversal of a policy followed by Washington for ten years, which made no distinction between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It consolidated a shift underway since at least February 2010 when secretary of state Hilary Clinton declared US readiness to talk to the Taliban and spelled out three objectives for such negotiations.
The second significant indicator of the US aim to hasten the reconciliation process came in efforts to open a Taliban office in Qatar to pave the way for serious negotiations. The original plan to do this by the Bonn conference in December fell through because of last minute opposition from President Karzai.
There are now reports of the US wanting to renew diplomatic engagement with the Taliban. American officials have also been working on Kabul to change its position. Washington’s hope is that with the opening of an office multiple channels that it pursued with Taliban representatives over the past year will begin to converge.
The Taliban’s demand for the release from Guantanamo Bay of five prisoners and their transfer to ‘house arrest’ in Qatar remains a sticking point. But talks on this and related issues are said to be making headway. Last week’s statement by the Afghan High Peace Council supporting the opening of the Qatar office suggests this. As do reports that indicate that a goal of these talks would be to pursue confidence-building measures including identifying areas for local ceasefires.
The third indication of a US shift is the plan, all but approved, for a faster and steeper security handover to Afghan forces. This change in the US/Nato military mission – from direct combat to “aid and assist” Afghan forces – ahead of 2014 could set an intermediate milestone both to test the viability of the Afghan National Army and align American military strategy to the political objective of ‘reconciliation’.
Together these developments suggest a more focused bid to create the political ground for a reconciliation process. This aligns the US approach more closely with what Pakistan has for years been advocating. But ironically this comes at a time when bilateral relations have hit rock bottom. The protracted Pakistan-US standoff means that a greater convergence on Afghan goals than in the past is yet to be employed to mend ties. It does however offer a substantive basis for renewed engagement.
The Chicago summit has much greater importance for President Obama than earlier conferences at Bonn and Istanbul. Chicago is critical to roll out a credible strategy to achieve the 2014 deadline, when most western combat troops will leave Afghanistan. It is also important for a more pressing reason. 2012 is election year, and Obama needs to feed and energise his party base. This means showing war weary Democrats that he has a viable plan to wind down the conflict.
There is speculation that he might announce an accelerated troop drawdown before or at Chicago – beyond the 30,000 surge troops that are to be withdrawn by September 2012. Talk of a quicker pace for withdrawal has already prompted a push back by military commanders. General John Allen, commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, recently declared he did not favour further troop cuts in 2013. Like other Pentagon officials he has also been advocating more fighting seasons before the 2014 drawdown. The White House and Vice President Biden are said to have a different view.
This reflects continuing rifts within the administration on how the diplomatic and military missions should proceed in Afghanistan. Whether these can be bridged to enable the reconciliation effort to build serious momentum remains one of the unknowns of 2012.
Other uncertainties about the 2014 transition also lie ahead. The ‘transition’ entails much more than a physical handover of security to Afghan authorities. The non-military path to 2014 is in fact more important. An unnamed US official acknowledged this in a recent newspaper report: “Reconciliation is the most important pillar of our effort….that is intertwined with the military elements of the transition”.
An orderly transition in fact hinges on at least four key factors: 1) progress towards a political settlement; 2) a regional buy-in and support for a negotiated solution; 3) effective Afghan governance ability and 4) building the capacity of Afghan security forces with the priority not on numbers but on quality and representativeness, and resolving vexed questions about their role, cost and sustainability.
The timetable for the transition is at present out of synch with the reconciliation goal. This urges the need to accelerate the political process. Despite indications of the US willingness to move in this direction, there is no sign of how one of the principal obstacles to starting such a process will be overcome. This is the continued US preference for a fight-talk rather than a talk-talk strategy. Whether US diplomatic moves in coming months can help shift the dynamic to more talk and less fight remains to be seen.
Other unknowns that can hinder the credible opening of a peace process include the strategic partnership agreement in negotiation between Washington and Kabul. Under this around 10,000 to 30,000 foreign troops will likely stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014. If this provides for open-ended US access to several bases in Afghanistan even if they are called ‘joint facilities’, how will this play into potential peace talks or be accepted by Afghanistan’s neighbours? Will such an arrangement be a deal-breaker in talks with the Taliban and unravel a fragile regional consensus?
Then there is the dangerous confrontation building up between Washington and Teheran over new sanctions against Iran and unresolved strains in America’s ties with Pakistan. This makes for a tense regional environment – the opposite of what is essential for an orderly Afghan endgame.
The size of the Afghan security forces and a plan for their sustainability are to be determined before the Chicago summit and perhaps announced there. An important challenge in this regard will be how to safeguard against the very real danger of a potentially large and well-armed force fracturing over time and becoming a ticket to chaos. Pakistan has already conveyed its concerns to Washington in this regard.
All this means that even with a more purposeful US diplomatic push towards reconciliation there are still tensions to address, policy contradictions to resolve and roadblocks to overcome. The feasibility of diplomatic moves and of the path to 2014 will also depend on restoring normalcy in the Pakistan-US relations. American officials often say that for real progress Pakistan has to be part of the solution. Coming months will test whether the two countries can really work together to accomplish their apparently common Afghan goals.
Source: The News
The unfortunate reality in the U.S. is the difficulty all Americans appear to have in viewing issues such as the Afghan war in a global context. Let’s say Obama indeed wants progress toward resolving the U.S.-Taliban conflict in some sort of positive-sum manner (we escape and they participate in Afghan politics). Yes, that could serve as an opportunity for improving ties with Pakistan. It also could serve as a rationale for cutting a deal with Tehran.
It is obvious, if one thinks about it, that Washington needs Tehran to escape from its Afghan mess. The question remains, however: are Washington decision-makers really thinking about it? Many superpower biases are blinding Washington decision-makers to political realities in such poorly understood places as Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Even after all these years, Washington sees reality only darkly through glasses worn by all “cool” representatives of the global elite. Jokes aside, it really is hard to accept that the view from the superpower peak can be deceptive.
If Pakistanis want Washington to behave differently, then Pakistanis need to explain very carefully how they see the world, what they need to be satisfied, the terms of accommodation between the U.S. and Pakistan or the U.S. and Iran or the U.S. and Afghanistan that might be acceptable to everyone. In Washington, the idea that both sides could agree on a deal that would actually be beneficial for both sides is unbelievable, shocking, unimaginable. It is very hard for superpowers to relax their grip. A superpower may be powerful and dangerous, but that does not prevent it from being scared of the dark, and the future sometimes looks very dark indeed.