Winter is not a good time to fight in Afghanistan. Each winter NATO forces have tried to kid themselves that the dieback in Taleban attacks represents the imminent collapse of the insurgency. However, with the melting of the snows each spring, the Taleban have proved them ever more wrong.
Nevertheless, something important and new seems to be happening, as the Afghan conflict goes into semi-hibernation, for the worst of the winter weather.
Despite the illness and imminent retirement of their chief, Hillary Clinton, State Department officials have been deeply involved, no doubt with their CIA opposite numbers, in little publicized talks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. What they seem to be talking about is peace.
On Tuesday, eight senior Afghan Taleban members were released by Pakistan, with the full approval of the Afghan government and the United States and its NATO allies. Among the freed were two former ministers in the ousted Taleban government and, some have argued, a far more significant figure, in the shape of the former bodyguard of the elusive Taleban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.
These releases are in fact only the latest in series, generally of prisoners held by the Pakistanis, though it is understood that some Taleban commanders held in Afghanistan have been set free or are on the brink of freedom.
The line being put out by Washington, albeit unofficially, is that the Talebs have recognized that they cannot win the ground war and are therefore prepared to negotiate. This does not entirely compute. NATO forces are committed to quitting Afghanistan by 2014. Whatever military presence they leave behind, will be largely trainers for the Afghan police and military, who have thus far not generally shone in their own operations against the insurgents.
The administration of president Hamid Karzai, who must under the constitution leave office when new elections are held in 2014, has in the view of some NATO diplomats, demonstrated itself to be rotten to the core, with corruption, payola and incompetence. By many assessments, once the NATO firepower has gone, Taleban insurgents will be pushing at an open door, in their drive to seize Kabul and other major cities and return to power.
That being the probable case, why should the Taleban be seeking to negotiate, to bargain the release of their leaders, in return for some assurances that are not yet clear?
Could it really be that the Taleban, whatever the contrary views of their erstwhile Al-Qaeda allies, actually do see that Afghanistan has had enough of pain and misery, death and destruction initiated by the Russian invasion 34 years ago?
The cardinal error of the presidency of George W. Bush was the failure to include the Taleban after their ouster, in the peace process that began in December 2001 in Bonn. Bush not only thought that the war in Afghanistan was won and the Talebs finished, but was also fixated on concluding his daddy’s unfinished business with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
It has taken 12 years for Washington to realize that there can be no peace without the Taleban. The urgent question now, is how profound that understanding really is.
The respected Pakistani commentator, Ahmed Rashid believes that with the exit of Karzai in 2014, and the prospects of a new and more flexible Afghan leadership, the Taleban think that they might at last be listened to. Given their predominantly Pashtun ethnic base, while they are the largest grouping within the country, they do not constitute the majority.
If the Taleban are interested in peace, then they have to be prepared to work within a political solution that will include all elements of Afghan society, including, it should be said, those many Pashtuns, who, despite the pull of ethnic loyalties, have nevertheless eschewed the Taleban’s cause.
It is still hard to believe that the diverse and often deep and bitter ethnic rivalries within Afghanistan, can find a lasting resolution. Yet that is what all who wish an end to the Afghans’ agony have to hope.
The Americans have re-elected a president with a far wider understanding than most Oval Office occupants have had of the world beyond their shores. With the replacement of the hyperactive Hillary Clinton by John Kerry at State Department, Obama has the opportunity to take closer control of US foreign policy. If he is wise, he will seek to promote an all-embracing, negotiated settlement, that will bring peace to this beautiful country, that has been torn apart by conflict for far too long.
Editorial: Afghanistan: A big development?
