Do we know what we are doing in Afghanistan?

Re-assessing Taliban and the peace talks

Days before the quadrilateral peace talks were expected to begin, the Taliban announced their refusal to participate in the process. Failure to bring the Taliban to the table and get them to talk is a diplomatic failure for all parties involved.

However, it doesn’t come as a surprise.

The Taliban control more parts of Afghanistan right now than at any time since US troops invaded in 2001. As international troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban have been beefing up their insurgency efforts. Though brief, the capture of the northern city of Kunduz last year proved to be a major psychological success for the group. Helmand, a major centre of opium production, has also been slipping out of government control for months. According to some estimates, the Taliban control or significantly influence about one third of Afghanistan. US General John Campbell recently expressed his concerns that a large part of Afghanistan was seen as being “at risk” of falling to the Taliban.

For a terrorist group that commands no international sympathy, has been at war with the biggest super powers in the world for the past 14 years and has drained their national exchequers of hundreds of billions of dollars, it is a pretty impressive performance. Perhaps the stick isn’t as effective of a tool as we thought it was and to our utter embarrassment and dismay, by refusing to join the peace talks, the Taliban have also thrown the carrot back at us. What they have embraced is the extensive supply of arms and ammunition with which they wreaked havoc in Afghanistan at will.

We either have to accept that the group’s ideology is too powerful and it is too resilient to be defeated or there is something inherently wrong with the policies of the forces trying to defeat it. Fourteen years in and after the death of hundreds and thousands of soldiers and civilians, no other explanation will cut it.

The Taliban had already communicated their pre-conditions for joining the peace talks — end of occupation of Afghanistan, elimination of blacklists and release of innocent prisoners. The test was to see that how much political clout Pakistan exercises on the group in reality and to what extent coercion would have worked this time to bring prominent Taliban leadership to the negotiation table. The answer: not much.

Sartaj Aziz recently publically admitted that the Taliban leadership resides in Pakistan along with their families and their dependence on basic medical facilities can be used to pressurise them. Everyone knows this is the case but coming from Pakistan’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs, it carries a lot of significance. Either it was an open message, out of frustration, to the Taliban that if they don’t comply, Pakistan will have no option but to take action against them or a mere façade by Pakistanis signaling to the international community that ‘hey, we tried everything we could!’

However, the real question remains: what is the quad offering to the Taliban that they can’t achieve otherwise? Why should they negotiate for a settlement when they are convinced of a total victory? Even if they don’t take over all provinces in Afghanistan, one thing is for sure — without the aid and assistance of foreign forces, they pose an existential threat to the unity government in the country.

At times, we forget that Afghanistan is not a mere concept. It is a land with a thousand years of rich history and culture. Though the means may not justify the end for many, the fact is that the Taliban are fighting a war against foreign occupation of their land. In this context, is it really impossible to break free from conventional rhetoric for a moment and switch the lens from terrorism to nationalism to view and understand the Taliban in a different way? I wonder.

Yes, living in the 21^st century, actions of the Taliban seem barbaric. No sane person would be okay with stoning of women, chopping off hands of people in public and quelling dissident voices. In order to cater to this, we have to look at the ideological make up of the society at large and while we are at it, it would also be helpful to look at exporters of Wahabi ideology and blatant violators of human rights in the Middle East. Meanwhile, droning of hospitals, schools, tribal elite and killing scores of civilians certainly isn’t the best policy option to de-radicalise or modernise the Afghan society. If anything, it pushes the otherwise peaceful people to the other edge as well.

While US, along with the rest of the world, figures out how to escape from the ghosts of the past, Afghanistan is plunging into darkness.

The National Unity Government in Afghanistan faces challenges on both internal and external fronts. International Transparency Index listed Afghanistan as the third most corrupt country in the world last year. The government remains unable to agree on how to fill thousands of vacant government positions. Just over the past year, the currency value in Afghanistan has dropped by a staggering 21 percent, raising the cost of the imported goods. The unemployment rate is also soaring — ranging now from 25 percent to 40 percent. The civilian casualties rates are an all-time high and thousands of young people have fled their country to reach Europe, in hope of a better future.

Many are still hopeful that the Taliban will come around and that peace talks will resume within weeks. While we wait for that to happen, it will be instrumental to revisit the strategy of key stakeholders and to ascertain what they actually want in Afghanistan. Can Americans afford to engage in the region for another decade? How comfortable will America be with a strategic nexus between Russia and Taliban to defeat growing threat of Islamic State — Khorasan? Does the unity government in Afghanistan even have the capacity and strength to defeat the Taliban? Even if Afghanistan is excluded from developmental projects like CPEC, does the geographical proximity allow for smooth deliverance of such projects in Pakistan? To what extent China can pressurise Pakistan to take military action against the Taliban sanctuaries in the country? Can an overly militaristic strategy terminate an ideological war in the region?

Most of all, if the situation keeps on deteriorating at the same or an accelerated rate, how long will it be till Afghanistan becomes the next Syria? For those who control the levers of power in Pakistan, it’s time to seriously reassess whether it would be possible to close their backdoor if hell breaks loose in Afghanistan.