by Vinay Kaura
It remains to be seen whether last week’s bold peace initiative by President Ashraf Ghani will strike a responsive chord with the Taliban.
Former Taliban fighters hand over rifles
to the Afghan government during a
reintegration ceremony in Ghor,
Afghanistan on May 28, 2012.
(Department of Defense photograph by Lt.
Joe Painter)
BESA Perspectives, No. 759, March 4, 2018
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Washington’s increased
support notwithstanding, the Afghan government has thus far failed to
contain the Taliban’s sustained terror campaign, while efforts to revive
the moribund peace process have similarly run into a dead alley. It
remains to be seen whether last week’s bold peace initiative by
President Ashraf Ghani will strike a responsive chord with the Taliban.
The recent spate of terror attacks in Afghanistan,
especially the Taliban’s January 27 suicide bombing in Kabul that
claimed more than 100 lives, has underscored the fragility of the
National Unity Government and kindled fears of the Taliban’s imminent
“spring offensive.” President Trump urged the international community to
“take decisive action against the Taliban and the terrorist
infrastructure that supports them,” while Secretary of State Tillerson
insisted that “all countries who support peace in Afghanistan… have an
obligation to take decisive action to stop the Taliban’s campaign of
violence.”
These tough words are not difficult to understand.
Ever since President Trump’s August 2017 announcement of a new Afghan
strategy, which ascribed India a key role in the stabilization efforts,
the administration has put greater military pressure on the Taliban in
order to bring it to the negotiating table with the Kabul government, to
little effect. Within this framework, Washington has recently announced
the suspension of some $2 billion in aid to Pakistan until Islamabad
took decisive action against the Taliban and the Haqqani network, widely
believed to be sheltered in Pakistan.
But how effective will this new strategy be? Can
the reinforcement of US military presence in Afghanistan by 3,000 troops
bring an end to the ongoing insurgency, something that ten times as
large a force failed to achieve? Not least since after nearly two
decades of extensive US military aid and training, the Afghan security
forces are still plagued by serious operational problems that have
enabled the Taliban, despite reported infighting within its ranks, to
gain control and/or contest nearly half of Afghanistan’s districts.
Hence, for all its tough talk, Washington seems keenly aware of the
urgent need for a political solution that is acceptable to both the
Afghan government and the Taliban. As Deputy Secretary of State John
Sullivan told a recent high-level meeting of the UN Security Council:
“Victory cannot be won on the battlefield – a solution is and must be
political.”
Unfortunately, the last time both sides held
official talks was in 2015 in Pakistan’s Murree town, only to be
indefinitely suspended after the uncovering of the death of the
Taliban’s founder leader Mullah Omar. Progress in subsequent
intermittent back-channel contacts between Kabul and the Taliban has
been similarly thwarted by deep mutual distrust, as well as the
duplicity of the Pakistani government and security forces. Islamabad’s
insistence on the presentation of a “credible” US-Afghan plan as a
prerequisite for resuming the peace process has been seen in Kabul,
Washington, and New Delhi as a ploy to evade the persistent demand that
the Pakistani security services end their support for the Taliban and
the Haqqani network.
On the domestic front, matters have been further
complicated by Afghanistan’s deepening political malaise. The national
unity government agreement, concluded in 2014 with Washington’s backing,
was not just a clever ploy to resolve the electoral stalemate between
the two presidential candidates Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, but a
de facto power-sharing deal between the Pashtuns and the other Afghan
communities (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, etc.). But the arrangement has
done little to ameliorate the political crisis as the Ghani-led
government has come to be seen as thoroughly corrupt, incompetent, and
incapable of bringing peace to the war torn nation, so much so that many
Afghans seem to view it as a no better governing alternative than the
Taliban.
This can perhaps explain Ghani’s bold peace
proposal of February 28, made at the conference of countries and
organizations involved in the Kabul peace process. In an abrupt
about-turn, the president offered to recognize the Taliban as a
legitimate political actor, to enter into a ceasefire with the
organization that will include a general prisoner release, and to remove
all sanctions “without any preconditions in order to pave the way for a
peace agreement.” It remains to be seen whether this latest initiative
will strike a more responsive chord with the Taliban than its many
failed precursors.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/taliban-threat-afghanistan/
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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