Obstacles to a settlement in Afghanistan

The following article, orginally from Guardian newspaper online, was included in short commentaries and a list of abridged articles from various sites on today's Just Foreign Policy website: http://justforeignpolicy.org, July 20-10.

One of the central points of the article, expressing the views of various experienced and knowledgeable analysts, is that the US-led occupation cannot succeed. Why? The insurgency is too strong, the Afghanistan state is in shambles, and the sanctuaries to which insurgents can retreat and regroup are plentiful across the border in Pakistan. In addition, the US-led counterinsurgency is focused on Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where the Taliban have their greatest influence. Counterinsurgency is not effective in this context.

Some analysts now think that there is no constructive point in extending the conflict. In the end, there will be a settlement that allows the Taliban to control southern provinces, while warlords will dominate elsewhere in the country. There is not much attention paid in this discussion to "democracy." US and/or UN forces would, it's suggested, keep the Taliban confined in the south. Pakistan could play a vital role in constraining the Taliban. If there is a settlement of this kind in the not-to-distant future, it would leave little room for democratic participation, secular education, or women's rights.

Taliban talks: the obstacles to a peace deal in AfghanistanJon Boone, Guardian, 19 July 2010 20.02 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/19/taliban-talks-obstacles-peace-deal-aghanistanKabul -

[...]
Organisers have attempted to attach great historic symbolism to the half-day conference. Of the nine international conferences on Afghanistan held in the last nine years, this is the first to actually convene inside Afghanistan. But even diplomats involved in the five-hour event roll their eyes when asked whether it is going to produce any dramatic changes in policy.

The communique - already leaked in draft form to the media - focuses on efforts to build up the Afghan state by making it more effective, better funded and less corrupt. But on the fringes of the conference the hot topic is a subject that is barely mentioned in the draft and until recently eschewed by the US administration; making peace with the Taliban.

That's because despite the fact that the Afghan government is finally strong enough to organise its own conference, the prospect of that government ultimately prevailing over an ever stronger insurgency has never looked more bleak. At an evening reception a few days before the conference, a senior European diplomat said glumly: "I cannot think of a single reason to die for Afghanistan."The country, which has suffered almost 30 years of war of one form or the other, is a problem for its neighbours, not for Europe, he said. It was a different a few years ago, when most people still thought victory was possible, he said. But now, pessimism has taken over.

"Afghanistan is in a state of freefall and I don't think strategy proposals announced at a one-day conference will solve that," said Candace Rondeaux, a senior analyst from the International Crisis Group. A paper by the Afghanistan NGO Security Office articulated what most people believe: that the counter-insurgency programme cannot win. It sees this summer's surge of US troops in southern Afghanistan as the "grand finale" of a western intervention which is looking to wind itself up.

The biggest problem is that what Nato soldiers are trying to do cannot be achieved on the time frames of the "political clocks" ticking down in Washington and its allied cities. In a recent off-record briefing, one of the most senior US soldiers in Afghanistan pointed out that no counter-insurgency has prevailed against an enemy with sanctuaries of the size the Taliban and other groups enjoy over the border in Pakistan.

No wonder then that most people's thoughts, including Barack Obama's administration, are turning to some sort of negotiated settlement with the insurgents. It is now part of the conventional wisdom in Kabul that the west will have to make compromises with insurgents that once would have been unthinkable, including dropping efforts for women to be given a more equal place in Afghan society. Few people put it quite as bluntly as Francesc Vendrell, a retired senior diplomat who served first the UN in Afghanistan before 2001 and then worked as the top representative of the European Union in Kabul. He recently told the Guardian that the current military effort to push the Taliban out of Kandahar and Helmand was particularly foolish because these are precisely the areas that, in his view, will have to be handed over to Taliban control.

Such a handover of the south could be achieved, he argued, through constitutional reform that would decentralise power from Kabul. In a trice, the south would be ceded to Taliban control, under the pretence of local democracy. Meanwhile, the north would similarly be handed back to the old warlords, the former strongmen who rose to prominence during the 1980s resistance to the Soviet occupation and its violent aftermath.

[...]
European diplomats say that whatever the latest thinking in the White House might be, David Petraeus, the new US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan seems interested in making the fight against the Taliban last as long as possible. After years of refusing to contemplate even the most secret of discussions with a movement viewed as partly responsible for the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Americans have precious few ways of reaching out to the other side.

A security official who has in the past been involved in efforts to reach out to the Taliban bemoaned the fact that so many years had been wasted, pointing out that in Northern Ireland the British government had contacts "from the beginning".

Instead of a well-organised effort to talk to the Taliban, there is currently an extraordinary free-for-all, with a whole range of people and countries trying to make contacts with the quetta shura, the Taliban's leadership council. They include Karzai's elder brother Qayoum, and even Burhanuddin Rabbani, a northern power broker and former president. Countries interested in getting in on the act are the UK, Germany, Turkey and Indonesia.

[...]