Another reason for 2011

By Steve Coll

I have a new post on my New Yorker blog about negotiations with the Taliban.

Of all the messages in President Obama’s Afghanistan speech last week (a speech with so many messages that it sounded like a chorale, and not a particularly harmonious one), one of the least remarked upon was a passing reference to efforts by Afghanistan’s government to negotiate a settlement with elements of the Taliban. “We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens,” Obama said.

Over the next eighteen months, we can probably expect three levels of American-backed political engagement with Taliban elements, in parallel to military and governance efforts. The least strategic and the least controversial will be a British-led plan to encourage defections by individual Taliban soldiers and commanders, who will be induced to change sides with money and employment-training programs. In addition, district-by-district and province-by-province, American and Afghan commanders will reach out opportunistically to Taliban commanders, as conditions permit, in the hope that promises of money and autonomy might “freeze” some of them in place as home-guard militias, a la the Sons of Iraq program. Finally, and most controversially, there will probably be efforts to renew the aborted Saudi-led negotiations with Taliban leaders around Mullah Omar, which were conceived as a strategic initiative to engage the Taliban in talks that might eventually draw them into a national political settlement in exchange for a time-bound American withdrawal plan. Hamid Karzai has expressed an interest in such negotiations, although his record of succeeding in such talks, dating back to the nineteen-nineties, is not very strong. If achievable, such a settlement could certainly be desirable, if it left behind an Afghan government and army strong enough to defend the country from Al Qaeda and like groups. Such a settlement would be more durable still if it were linked to or coincided with improved relations between India and Pakistan.

To read the rest, visit Think Tank.

Steve Coll is the president of the New America Foundation and a staff writer at The New Yorker.