By M H Ahssan
In an interview with the New York Times on March 7, United States President Barack Obama said he "hopes US troops can identify moderate elements of the Taliban and move them toward reconciliation". The proposition came as a conclusion to a larger picture: the battlefield situation in Afghanistan.
According to the New York Times, he said the United States "was not winning the war in that country" and thus the door must be opened to a "reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq".
Following these statements, a flurry of comments exploded throughout the international media: while most of the mainstream press and networks in the West praised the "new daring turn" in US policy, that is, the readiness to "engage the Taliban", most of the pan-Arabist and jihadi sympathizer outlets in the region warned the move won't be successful. In a panel discussion on BBC TV Arabic (in which this author participated), a noted expert in Islamist affairs from Amman said, "There is no such thing as Taliban independent from the high-ups like [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar."
Another panelist, a seasoned Afghan journalist from Kabul added: "In Iraq, you have a bigger US force, and a totally different geopolitical context than in Afghanistan. Besides, why would Washington want to engage a terror force which is not accepted by the population?" This was a small sampling of the brouhaha reigning in the debate about the real strategic intentions of the Obama administration.
The good and the bad
The US administration is being advised that any change in strategy in Afghanistan is better than the previous situation. It is being told that the troop surge model as applied in Iraq may work, if modified to meet Afghanistan's "complexities". The president must also be attracted to the idea that an "engagement" with some quarters of the Taliban will fit perfectly with the global idea of engagement and sitting down and listening that he seems to have adopted for the entire region.
But many questions still need to be answered. Does the plan require a dialogue with the Taliban organization as a whole or with elements "within" the organization? Apparently, the US channel is to be established with "elements" not with the leadership of the network. Then the next question is: if they aren't part of the top leadership, are these elements able to sway the entire organization towards engagement? Apparently not, according to experts on the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So, the goal is to sway these factions - called moderates - from the Taliban, not to steer the entire group in another direction.
Here we have to pause and come to the first "complex" conclusion: while Afghan President Hamid Karzai has extended an olive branch to Mullah Omar to join the government, an invitation quickly rejected, Obama is announcing a more modest goal that is to identify "moderate elements" from the Taliban and "strike a deal with them". But the modest narrative of the goal doesn't make it necessarily reachable. Here is why.
If the "moderate Taliban" we're looking to identify are "inside" the network, when they engage with the US, they will be lethally ejected by the hard core of the group, backed by al-Qaeda. Hence, the next question will be to know if those "dissidents" would actually secede and form a "moderate Taliban" organization working with the US and the Karzai government.
From the names available on such a list, including former "Taliban ambassadors" to Pakistan and the international community and those who sought Saudi Arabia's help in launching a dialogue, we can't see strong commanders willing to surge militarily against the mother ship. As far as we can project, there are no leaders and radical clerics who would carry that task of establishing an all-out new "good Taliban", even with millions of dollars as incentive. A Taliban civil war is not going to happen, for now.
But is there another more attainable goal? According to the Obama administration and some experts, there may be other options.
Little 'talibans?'
In recent months, a new concept has been pushed via defense and counter-terrorism circles arguing that instead of chipping off from the actual "Taliban" militia on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, attention must be focusing on harvesting the local "taliban" (little "t"). According to this theory, the little "ts" are individuals and groups who have joined the large umbrella under Mullah Omar but not the membership of the organization, or have proclaimed themselves as "taliban affiliates".
Hence, in comparison with the Iraqi Sahwa (Awakening) movement backed by the US-led coalition, these sub-militias of all walks of life would become the target of American political charm and dollars. If identified and reached out to - so believe the architects of the forthcoming Afghan "surge" - they will become the Afghan parallel to the Sahwas of Mesopotamia. Note that Obama specified that it would be the "American military who would reach out to these moderate elements"; meaning they will be dealt with from a lower level rather than from a full-fledged diplomatic perspective.
In that case, unlike what the media has been speculating about, this is not a US dialogue with the party it is at war with, headed by Mullah Omar and his emirs. It is not even an attempt to break the mother ship into two and recuperate the more moderate branch. There are no takers for a massive retreat from the Taliban into the arms of Kabul's government or Washington's "infidel" generosity.
What the US move is about is much more pragmatic and realistic: nibbling off from the wide pool of angry people and shifting them from frustration with Karzai to enmity towards Mullah Omar. Indeed, there are tens of thousands of armed males aggregating in villages, clans, tribes and neighborhoods, who wear turbans and sometimes claim they are Taliban for a thousand reasons. These sub-militias aren't particularly ideological or maybe do not even understand much of the doctrine they claim to be following. A number of experts and some strategists believe that these men of the Afghan underworld can become the "new army" against the "bad Taliban". Can they?
Not only it is possible, it should have been the case eight years ago. However, there are two fundamental mistakes not to make.
First, the Obama administration and US military strategists must not see these new war constituents, nor announce them, as who they aren't. These sub-militias sought to turn the tide against the real Taliban aren't your "moderate" guys. In reality they have no firm ideological affiliation. With few exceptions, the tribal and urban forces to be targeted for "integration" will simply shift alliances or allegiance for money and power. The American, Western and international public must not be led to believe that a piece of architecture will be successful in transforming radicals into moderates or swaying away bands of armed men from extremism, let alone jihadism.
The mutation to moderation happens not via cash deals but through years of schooling, an efficient media and perseverant non-governmental organizations. It happens from younger into older age. Hence, forget about the "identification of moderate" part of the Obama strategy. Inducing civil societies into liberalism, or even moderation, needs government crafting of a kind that doesn't exist in Washington or Brussels for the time being.
In addition, these militias and militants to be swayed away from Waziristan's exiles aren't going to produce a national reconciliation. They do not represent the radical ideological web which is behind the war against the new Afghan democracy. National reconciliation takes place between two or more large, historical and strategic forces. Instead, we're talking about recuperation of elements extracted from the Taliban, not reconciliation with the latter. Hence, US stated goals should be even more modest in this regard.
The second fatal mistake not to commit is to call them Taliban, proto-Taliban or crypto-Taliban. Even if for publicity purposes it suits the goal of soothing the US and Western public, constructing a fictive identity to a plethora of tribal-urban sub-militias will backfire on the whole campaign. Here is why.
Since they aren't a breakaway faction from the main organization, they can't form another Taliban to challenge the Mullah Omar leadership. And since they have no ideology of their own they won't be able to de-radicalize others. Hence, if they are baptized as the other "taliban", instead of using the credibility of the name to push back against the bad guys, the name will ultimately transform them into what we don't want them to be: Taliban!
If we call them nice Taliban or "little ts", we would be throwing them back into the arms of the forces we want to sway them from. Knowing what I know from jihadi strategies, it won't take long before the two Talibans would eventually sit down and strike a deal, and overwhelm the Kabul government.
Learn from Iraq
If the Iraq Sahwa model is the inspiration for an Afghan engagement with local forces, we need to learn the right lessons from it. In Iraq, the US didn't create good al-Qaeda versus bad al-Qaeda; it didn't identify moderate elements from al-Qaeda to pit them against the mother force. The political dimension of the "surge" relied heavily on recruiting tribes, social cadres and Sunni elements regardless of their affiliations and empowering them via a "new" organization, called Sahwa Councils. We gave these new local allies an identity of their own, not the identity of the forces they fought against.
But more important, the greater dimension of the "surge" wasn't the mere rise of the Sahwas, but the moving forward of the democratic political process with its political parties, non-governmental organizations, movements and media. Swaying Sunni militias against al-Qaeda was only one component of the strategy; the larger strategy was to sustain pressures until Iraqi forces, legislators and ministries are up and running.
By comparison, in Afghanistan, we should make the case of a similar, not necessarily identical process: mobilizing popular militias, giving them an identity of their own, not calling them Taliban, and not expecting them to be the missing link to the future but a force helpful in pushing the political process forward until it can resist, contain and reverse the Taliban.
How to measure victory and defeat
Obama, and before him president George W Bush, were always trying to measure the success in the war in Afghanistan. While the latter spoke of victories, the current president speaks of failures. The real issue is how to measure victory or a defeat.
Is destroying al-Qaeda and Taliban bunkers a definitive indicator of victory? Are the relentless terror attacks by the jihadis the other definitive measurement of failures? I don't think either parameter gives us an answer. Rather, it is the battle taking place over the conquest of the minds and hearts of the school children and teens of the country that will make or break that burgeoning democracy. Unfortunately, neither the past nor the current administration seems to see the war of ideas with such urgency.
The Obama administration has to be relentlessly accurate in describing the choices it intends to make in Afghanistan and in the confrontation with jihadis worldwide. If its final intention is to cut a deal with the Taliban - in this article I won't argue about the choice - it must faithfully inform the US public of this choice, instead of developing a phased narrative of disengagement.
But if it seriously intends to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda by isolating them further inside Afghanistan and mobilizing the international community, the administration also needs to prepare the American and Western public for that choice. For in this age of hyper-globalization, the jihadi forces have an astonishing capacity to outmaneuver the smartest strategies devised by their enemies and, on the other hand, the public in the US has developed a surprising ability to understand the intentions of both the terror forces and of its own government. Transparency is everything in this age.
An unlikely engagement
United States President Barack Obama's suggestion that the United States might reach out to "moderate" Taliban as part of the effort to end the Afghan insurgency has been greeted warmly by many, including the Afghan president.
In an interview published in the New York Times, Obama said flatly that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan, and was ready to adapt tactics it had learned in Iraq to the Afghan war effort.
Obama explained that if one were to speak with the US military general responsible for the strategy in Iraq, "I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been urging talks with the Taliban for some time, welcomed the comments in Kabul on March 8.
"Yesterday, the American President Obama accepted and approved the path of peace and talks with those Afghan Taliban who he called 'moderates'," Karzai said. "This is good news. This is an approval of our previous stance and we accept and praise it."
However, while Karzai is not alone in his support for such negotiations, there is much debate as to whether the strategy can be successfully exported to Afghanistan.
Some Afghanistan observers, for example, note that Karzai may have been quick to laud the proposal to counter the criticism with which his previous calls for negotiations were met.
Others, such as Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former Taliban cabinet member and diplomat who last year participated in an informal Saudi Arabia-sponsored effort to initiate dialogue with the Taliban, say the US had no choice but to adopt this strategy.
"First Obama has admitted that the Americans cannot win in Afghanistan and that war is not the solution," Zaeef said. "So if they cannot win, what should they do? Automatically they have to look for an alternative, which is that they have to resolve this conflict though negotiations based on mutual respect."
While he says the initiative is a good omen for peace in Afghanistan, Zaeef added in an interview with HNN that it is up to the United States to create an atmosphere of trust.
Choosing the right partners
Still others foresee additional roadblocks in the way of successful negotiations.
While in Washington, the idea of "talking to the Taliban" rests on the premise that negotiations can peel away some moderate Taliban from their extremist comrades, there is skepticism as to whether such moderates could actually influence hardline Taliban leaders.
And Afghan commentator Waheed Muzda, for example, warns even against making such distinctions, saying the Taliban in Afghanistan are dangerous whatever label is bestowed on them.
Though an Afghan government-sponsored program has "reconciled" thousands of Taliban fighters with the government, Muzda suggests that the move has not dented the group's capacity to launch attacks. In fact, the number and sophistication of Taliban attacks have only increased in recent years, he says.
"Moderate Taliban is an undefined term, but it is being used a lot," he said. "If there are moderate Taliban, they are people who are not involved in fighting and might be hiding somewhere inside Afghanistan or outside in [neighboring] Pakistan."
Kabul-based analyst Nasrullah Stanekzai noted that in Afghanistan itself, there are many elements opposed to such negotiations - both within the government and the Taliban.
Still, he tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, while some Taliban leaders outside the country are compromised because of their close links with global extremist networks, any effort that brings Afghans themselves to the negotiating table could bear fruit.
"Afghans have this capacity to talk to each other. But there are elements within the Afghan government who do not want to see the Taliban being included into the political process because they think it might threaten their power," Stanekzai said.
He continued: "Anyway, the only option we have [to resolve the conflict in our country] is to bring together all Afghans, on the basis of Afghanistan's national interests, to bring peace to our country."
Other steps toward peace
After spending years in detention at the US facility in Guantanamo, Cuba, former Taliban cabinet member Zaeef now stands among those who have left the ranks of the Taliban and reconciled with the Afghan government.
Today a commentator on Taliban issues, Zaeef explains what steps he believes the United States should take to help ensure that negotiations with the Taliban end in success.
First, he says, the United States must close prisons that Taliban members associate with abuse, in particular the facilities at Guantanamo and at the Bagram air base north of Kabul. He also says the names of Mullah Muhammad Omar and other Taliban leaders must be removed from United Nations and US "black lists" and reward offers dropped.
Zaeef also believes that distinguishing between "moderate" and "extremist" Taliban is not practical - but not because different types don't exist.
"If the Americans are thinking, and as Obama has also said, that they want to distinguish between the hardline and moderate Taliban, it will not be acceptable to anybody, because it is like telling two brothers that you love one and want to play with him while you want to kill the other one," Zaeef said. Nader Khan Katawazi, a parliamentarian representing Afghanistan's eastern Paktika Province, believes moderate Taliban will be able to influence their hardline brethren, as long as the talks are conducted in a spirit of openness. "It is natural that there are elements within the Taliban who want to resolve this issue through negotiations," he said.
"If both sides agree to hold open-hearted constructive talks, I think, it will even force what you and I would call the extremist Taliban to accept that process." Hardline Taliban are already taking steps to counter another new US strategy - the "surge" of 17,000 fresh troops into the theater. Pakistani and international media reports indicate that, in an apparent attempt to answer Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar's call for unity, the three main Taliban factions in Pakistan's restive Waziristan tribal region formed a "Council of United Holy Warriors" late last month.
Meanwhile, analysts suggest that the recent ceasefire agreements in the Pakistani regions of Swat and Bajaur could free up fighters to battle US forces in Afghanistan. Zaeef, noting the possibility that increased numbers on both sides could lead to intensified fighting, says the United States is sending mixed messages. "Sending more troops to Afghanistan is a difficult proposition to agree to," Zaeef said. "This only creates concerns among people here and in the region that on the one hand, Americans are talking peace, while on the other, they are doubling and even tripling their troop numbers. And this is contrary to the talk of peace."
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