Talking and Fighting in Afghanistan

It’s just one weekend’s news: First, Afghan President Hamid Karzai announces that the Americans are holding talks with the Taliban over a settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan. Then, a suicide bomber attacks a German military convoy carrying the commander of the German base at Kunduz. In other words: business as usual in Afghanistan.

It’s not abnormal for Afghanis to fight and negotiate at the same time. The goal is always to win over a little more for oneself and one’s tribe or clan. And the combatant chooses the medium with which he can most effectively reach that goal. For the Taliban now, signs point to negotiations, because the allied campaign since the (predominantly American) troop increase has put the extremists very much on the defensive. They see themselves incapable right now of much more than pinpricks.

I am not fundamentally opposed to negotiations with the Taliban. At the beginning of the Oslo peace process in the early ‘90s, Israel’s former Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was later killed, said “We must pursue the peace process as if there is no terrorism, and fight terrorism as if there is no peace process..” Something similar applies for the allies in Afghanistan. Here, too, the military operation and the political will to negotiate are merely two sides to the same coin. The resolutely conducted military campaign against the Taliban opened up, for the first time, even the possibility of finding a solution that deserves to be named as such and that will not be dictated by radicals.

(http://peacenow.org/apn-positions/rejection-of-violence-and-terror.html)

At the same time, in the West, it has always seemed clear that the military conflict would be a necessary but insufficient medium for the liberation of the country. Therefore we must reintegrate into society at least those Taliban who are not so blinded by ideology that every compromise seems impossible from the outset. In fact, this process has begun at last. Time and again, the Afghan government and the allies have successes in convincing clans and tribes to recognize the ruling law of the land and to reconcile. This fragmented, piecemeal erosion of the Taliban is preferable to a comprehensive “unification,” which the radical elements among the Taliban would be allowed to veto in the new Afghanistan. We cannot leave Afghanistan without securing a minimum level of human rights, particularly for women. And we also cannot allow the radicals to turn the country once again into a training ground for terrorists.

The allies have deployed formidable resources and have incurred a high death toll in order to turn the tide in Afghanistan. That’s why the focus now should be on securing politically what was attained militarily, and on not giving the Taliban at the negotiation table what they could not achieve in battle.

After the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, a debate erupted in the West over whether we should pull more quickly out of Afghanistan. The need to finally put this war behind us is all too understandable. Yet the allies must be careful not to undo, through haste, what has been accomplished with tremendous effort over the past years.