Page 2 of 2 Hot air over Taliban
talks By Philip Smucker
words, Afghan
leaders maintain an age-old tradition - spelled
pragmatism - of keeping their enemy close at hand
to sustain - and sometimes enhance - their own
authority. Karzai is engaged in just this.
It would not matter much if Washington
actually opposed the idea of peace talks with the
Taliban. In any case, the US State Department
clearly does not. Western leaders, who still laud
Karzai
as an anti-terror poster boy, are in fact
encouraging talks with the Taliban as a first step
toward their own "exit strategy" from Afghanistan.
There is great risk involved. The Taliban,
as they grow stronger in the hinterlands, exert
more and more influence in the streets of larger
towns and cities, as well as within political
circles in Kabul. And even if the Taliban chose
the political route to shared power in
Afghanistan, it is not at all clear that their
behind-the-scenes leaders would swear off their
long-standing ties to al-Qaeda and an
international jihad under the sway of Washington's
arch-enemies, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri and bin
Laden. No one has forgotten that the Taliban
actually decided to continue hosting bin Laden and
friends even after Washington threatened all-out
war in the autumn of 2001.
Nevertheless,
with little concerted military action to end
al-Qaeda's machinations inside Pakistan's North
Western Frontier Province, the Karzai government
may have no choice but to engage in an effort to
drive a wedge between Afghanistan's Taliban and
the extremists on the other side of the Durand
Line. Certainly, NATO countries do not relish the
idea of being locked in a decades-long stalemate
in Afghanistan, and that is one reason they are
encouraging Karzai.
The idea of getting
the Taliban on board the political process isn't
new.
For several years, Karzai's
operatives have engaged in a delicate effort to
lure mid-level and senior Taliban away from their
one-eyed leader, Mullah Omar, and bring them back
into the political fold. There have been some
notable successes. Former (some say "current")
Taliban leader Mullah Salam Rocketti broke ranks
with fighters in the field and is now an elected
member of Parliament.
The door remains
open. Senior Afghan intelligence officials say
they regularly offer to drop or lower charges
against captured Taliban operatives in exchange
for information about their senior leaders and
al-Qaeda's top tier.
Despite
well-documented brutalities perpetrated by the
Taliban between 1996 and 2001, the international
community has never paid much lip service to an
international war-crimes court for Afghanistan.
Warlords and the Taliban's various ministers of
death don't even need an "amnesty", since no one
is lining up to prosecute them for human-rights
violations.
Talks with the Taliban are not
cheap, but they may be cheaper - in the long run -
than other options. NATO still does not have
adequate forces on the ground to control
Afghanistan's Pashtun villages, where the Taliban
are making inroads through intimidation and
propaganda.
Pashtuns don't want peace at
any cost, but they do want it desperately.
A new survey suggests that Taliban support
among civilians in southern Afghanistan has shot
up to nearly 27% of the population from single
digits a year earlier. The Senlis Council's poll
of 17,000 Afghan men in the south and east
suggested that Afghans in southern Afghanistan are
increasingly prepared to announce their support
for the Taliban openly. A report on the poll
stated that fewer and fewer Pashtuns believe that
their own government or NATO has the firepower or
willpower to defeat the Taliban militarily.
One of the Taliban's strongest suits,
despite its well-honed brutal ways, is a
reputation for anti-corruption and stern sharia
(Islamic) law enforcement. Many of the Afghans are
sick and tired of living in poverty and getting
shot at while Kabul politicians live in glass
houses and enrich themselves.
These
emerging facts on the ground add up to a
strengthened Taliban hand at the negotiation
table. The next move is Karzai's.
Philip Smucker is a commentator
and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle
East. He is the author of Al-Qaeda's Great
Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's
Trail (2004).
(Copyright 2007 Asia
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