The Obama Administration and "Moderate" Taliban Factions

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Last November I wrote against negotiations between the United States and/or the Afghan government on the one hand and Taliban leaders on the other. At the time, the Bush administration floated such a trial balloon in response to Saudi officials and Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai who promoted such talks. U.S. military leaders, most of all the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, in charge of the U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, bought also into the idea. And now, the Obama administration seems to aim at negotiating with so-called moderate Taliban factions in order to curb violence and promote peace in Afghanistan. Whether the administration’s objectives are narrowly focused on capturing or neutralizing the Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in hiding or broadly designed to prevent the resurrection of Taliban rule in Afghanistan as well, negotiations will not solve the Afghan problem but likely worsen it. 

In almost all conflicts it makes sense to negotiate and try to find some common ground. But in some cases talking with the other side is not a reasonable option. The Taliban in Afghanistan—and Pakistan, close allies, hosts, and enablers of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda Central, represent such a case. There are no moderates within the Taliban movement that is the most extreme manifestation of Salafism and thus committed to purify or destroy their own Muslim brethren and, of course, infidels who defend the right of those Afghans who do not follow their fanatic religopolitical extremism.

This point is driven home by Kristen L. Rouse, a first lieutenant in the Army National Guard, who served in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007 in an  op-ed article in today’s New York Times. After recalling deadly Taliban attacks on school children in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s recent success in closing down many schools in the Swat region of Pakistan, she writes

“It’s also made me get back in touch with many of the soldiers I deployed with, sharing stories and talking about Afghanistan’s future. We hold diverse views about the war and about what should happen next. But I can tell you this much: many of the veterans I know are outraged at the possibility of the United States negotiating with the Taliban as if they were just another Afghan political party and not a criminal gang that inflicts and enforces the most extreme ignorance, poverty and violence upon innocent people — upon schoolchildren.”

In another op-ed in today’s Times, Patrick French analyzes the recent power grab of the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat Valley that might well foreshadow what would happen in neighboring Afghanistan upon the negotiated compromise with the “moderate” Afghan Taliban and their return to their native land. French who has relatives that lived in the region, writes,

“Like most violent revolutionary movements, the Taliban use social injustice and a half-understood philosophy as an excuse to grab land and power. Houses and property have been taken over, and the Taliban have announced that people should pay 40 percent of their rent to their landlords and 60 percent to “jihad.” In the district capital, Mingora, decapitated corpses were dangled from lampposts with notices pinned to them stating the “un-Islamic” action that merited death. At least 185 schools, most for girls, have been closed. Government officials, journalists and security troops have had their throats slit. Little wonder that most of my brother-in-law’s family has fled, along with 400,000 others.”

As for the meaning of this development, French argues that “The central premise behind the war on terrorism was that extremist groups should not be allowed sanctuaries from which to threaten the rest of the world. In that context, the loss of Swat offers the Taliban and other extremist groups a template for the future.”

Indeed, this is the template, for sure, that the Taliban forces have in mind for Afghanistan. Negotiating some kind of settlement with iffy “moderates” of the movement would be a huge step forward toward that goal.

There is no room whatsoever for negotiations.

Comments

[Eric Chen]

Professor Nacos,

An emphasis on military means (peace-building, security, as well as war-fighting) equates to greater control - albeit expensive control - in framing, rules and expectations. 9/11 converted President Bush into a progressive and he chose a progressive frame for the War on Terror.

On the other hand, diplomacy, particularly with competitors, as a collective method, gives up control and is counted by what is given, what is conceded, and who (eg, local liberal dissidents and abused minorities) is sacrificed in order to reach accord with those competitors. President Bush was often criticized for failing at diplomacy, but the unasked questions are, what did the Bush administration refuse to give and concede, and who did the Bush refuse to sacrifice? In contrast, for the sake of better diplomacy and a shift away from military means, what is the Obama administration willing to give away and concede, and who will be sacrificed to the likes of Iran, Russia, or the "moderate" Taliban?

These questions are not meant as implicit praise or criticism of either President, because while the ideological answer is easy (for a progressive), the practical questions regarding the Afghanistan mission are and have always been much more difficult than, say, the Iraq mission. Which is to say, President Obama - like Presidents Clinton and Bush before him - is forced to choose from a set of highly unattractive options regarding that region of the world.

But I will comment here from an ideological standpoint, because your post is more ideological than practical: I agree with you.

I have long noted on your blog and elsewhere that the post-9/11 anti-war movement is anti-progressive. I have watched with sadness since 9/11 as many progressives, who should know better, joined with and thereby empowered the anti-war movement. The effect of their decision to oppose the *definitively* progressive Iraq mission has been to greatly reduce progressive principles as guiding principles for (applied) American foreign policy, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Even now, when the Iraq mission seems to be on a successful track and a progressive outcome in the global War on Terror largely depends on our success in Iraq, many of those progressives *still* refuse to support our Iraq mission or even acknowledge its importance to achieving a progressive liberal world order.

So, to any progressive who opposed the Iraq mission and now frets that progressive ideals - the same progressive ideals they betrayed in order to protest Operation Iraqi Freedom - are being sacrificed in Afghanistan, I say this: The principles and people whom we will sacrifice because you joined the anti-progressive anti-war movement - they, and we, will reap what you have sown. While they are not your victims, your choice to be anti-war may have robbed them of our help, and robbed us of our beliefs.