Opinion

Ending the Afghan war

October 15, 2018

Signaling US President Donald Trump’s interest in finding a negotiated end to the Afghan war, Zalmay Khalilzad, America’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, held discussions with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah in Kabul last week.

It is too early to say whether Khalilzad will succeed in his mission, but a new YouGov survey reveals that a majority of Americans would support drawing US involvement to a close and bringing the troops back home. The Afghan people are even more anxious to see an end to the war which entered its 18th year last week. For them the situation on the ground only gets worse with every passing day.

“Every day, more than 300 people are killed in Afghanistan, sometimes by foreign forces and sometimes by government forces and sometimes by anti-government armed militants, or in barbaric explosions in cities and even in mosques and sacred places,” according to Hizb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was among the heads of political parties and groups and members of parliament and residents who came together in Kabul on Thursday to announce the launch of a new political movement to work for peace.

Still if the war continues, there are several reasons for this. The most important is the inconsistency in Trump’s stance. Candidate Trump began questioning the wisdom of America continuing its presence in Afghanistan at great cost of blood and treasure. Once in office, Trump flirted with the idea of withdrawing all American troops from Afghanistan before his national security team convinced him in August 2017 to embrace a new strategy. The goal was to bomb the Taliban into peace talks and invite them to join the Ghani government.

This strategy failed only because it suffered from a number of flaws. If relentless bombing could do the work, why stop it at the point where the Taliban agree to join negotiations? Does it not make sense to continue the bombing until the Taliban find the pain so unbearable that they surrender conceding defeat?

But the major flaw was that America failed to recognize that this is a game the Taliban could play as well and they have been playing it to the detriment of all. Many experts believe that the Taliban military planners might have ordered the August offensive to counter the impression that US military action was forcing them into negotiations, and to demonstrate that they can outdo the Americans in exerting pressure on the battlefield.

The escalation in violence does not mean that the Taliban are not genuinely interested in peace. The rising civilian casualties due to bomb blasts and suicide attacks do not add to the insurgents’ popularity among the Afghan people whose ordeal began long before the 2001 US-led invasion. This means that prolonging the conflict is not in the interest of the Taliban either. What prevents a settlement are the terms acceptable to the main antagonists and regional powers, especially Pakistan.

The US can seek the most honorable terms as long as these terms do not impinge on Afghan sovereignty or legitimize the invasion. Here the role of neutral mediators becomes important. They played an important part during the years-long process of negotiating for the withdrawal of 120,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan in the 1980s. If the Bonn process in late 2001 led to the formation of a new inclusive Afghan government headed by Hamid Karzai, it was again due to the efforts of a UN team of experts led by former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi.

In the meantime, Khalilzad could seek, in the early weeks of his diplomacy, confidence building steps like shifts in tactics by both sides that reduce civilian casualties.


October 15, 2018
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