Confidence-Inspiring Negotiations Between Taliban and Afghanistan

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Mike Pompeo (Andrew Harnik/AP)

"The Taliban is not clearly committed to searching for a real peace -- as distinguished from trying to use the peace process to achieve its own ends."

Anthony Cordesman, former director intelligence assessment, U.S.Defense Department

 

"This opportunity must not be squandered. Immense sacrifice and investment by the United States, our partners, and the people of Afghanistan have made this moment of hope possible."

"I urge the negotiators to demonstrate the pragmatism, restraint, and flexibility this process will require to succeed. The people of Afghanistan and the international community will be watching closely."

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo 

 

"Eventually we as Afghans should be prepared for any eventuality."

"There is no doubt that there will be consequences by the decisions made by [our] international partners all together [to withdraw their troops]."

"But it is our responsibility to work together and find a way to live in peace."

"It will happen one day, of course, and Afghanistan should be able to stand on its own feet, but if it is premature, it will have its consequences."

Abdullah Abdullah, Chairman of Afghanistan's High Council for National Reconciliation  

A Taliban spokesman told the BBC it represented "good progress" that both sides were talking rather than fighting   Reuters

 It has been nineteen years since the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom representing the Anglo-American air campaign meant to target the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Taliban, then in control of Afghanistan, hosted al-Qaeda and refused to surrender Osama bin Laden to the United States following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Soldiers from over 50 countries that had signed on to the mission led by the UN and by NATO military formulations were involved. 

Nineteen years ago this very week the country was at war with itself after twenty years of warlord conflicts, famine and the carpet-bombing of the Soviets followed by Taliban rule. In that time over a million Afghans had been killed, a full third of the Afghan population were refugees living outside the country, and those that stayed were on the cusp of famine. Over a million landmines were scattered on the landscape. The Taliban government had virtually enslaved the women of Afghanistan to their Islamist vision of women as chattel.

 

Afghan Taliban militants celebrate the peace deal with the U.S.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not internationally recognized as legitimate; it was a scab on a bleeding sore of a country incapable of fighting for itself. Pakistan had its designs on Afghanistan, helping to create and to support the Taliban, viewing them as indispensable to their intention to see Afghanistan as a country in disarray, and to ensure that India had no influence in the embattled country. Not only was the Taliban able to find haven in Pakistan when they were ousted by Operating Enduring Freedom, so too was al-Qaeda and bin Laden.

The international community is over-wearied with its commitment to seeing Afghanistan become a fully sovereign nation. It is certainly not the same country it was nineteen years earlier. Still in a state of misrule and poverty, there is quality of life; it now has civic infrastructure, and aspires to democratic governance, its women are able to take part in life as equal partners in government, policing, politics, education and business. Their worst nightmare is a Taliban return to its former governing position which would mean a reversion to Islamist sharia traditions.

Even as the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan are speaking peace to one another in Qatar, introduced to the necessity of bargaining with one another for a peace settlement through the determined initiative of the U.S. government anxious to withdraw all its troops from the country, the Taliban have continued their bloody, violent assaults on targeted areas, including government offices and diplomatic missions in the supposedly most secure areas of Kabul.

Firefighters spray water at the site of an explosion targeting the convoy of Afghanistan's Vice-President Amrullah Saleh in Kabul. (AFP/Getty Images)

 

According to the Asia Foundation's latest public opinion poll in Afghanistan, 88.7 percent of respondents agreed they supported the U.S.-orchestrated negotiations, "somewhat", while those who feel some manner of reconciliation with the Taliban is possible however, drops to 64 percent, 58 percent among women. Strong majorities (78 percent to 87 percent) count women's rights, equality, freedom of the press and the current constitution among areas that are not up for discussion; post 9/11 achievements not to be negotiated away.

85.1 percent of Afghans have no sympathy for the Taliban according to the survey by the Asia Foundation, and while 13.4 percent indicate some measure of sympathy, 28.6 percent of them have no idea why they might feel that way. Several other agencies engage in multi-year polling across Afghanistan beyond the Asia Foundation, and among ordinary Afghans, women in particular, support for the NATO countries' military efforts remains high.

A suicide attack on a government compound in Nangarhar province last weekend left thirteen people dead. In the first three months after the U.S. February pact with the Taliban, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security tallied 3,800 Taliban attacks, which resulted in 420 deaths. That same directorate noted that the Taliban maintains ties with al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorist organizations.

The US-led intervention and NATO troops added another chapter to Afghanistan's history of conflict and war