http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/opini ... ref=slogin


Classic op-ed from the New York Times. Mabye one of their best of all time.


Talk to the Taliban

By GREG MILLS
KABUL, Afghanistan

IF the past five years of increasingly violent fighting in Afghanistan have proved anything, it is this: The Taliban and their allies cannot be beaten by military means alone. Perhaps, then, the moment has come to talk to the Taliban and other insurgents.

But before we do anything, we have to understand them. Nearly half of Afghanistan’s population is Pashtun, the ethnic group from which the Taliban draw the bulk of their foot soldiers and supporters. In the international effort to shift the population’s loyalties away from the Taliban, the Pashtuns have, not surprisingly, proved more resistant than the country’s other main groups, the Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks. But for all four groups, the American and other members of the International Security Assistance Force now in Afghanistan are visitors, probably temporary and increasingly unwelcome, like the British colonizers and Soviets before them.

Though the Taliban came to be loathed by most non-Pashtuns, it’s important to remember that initially their efforts to restore security after the chaotic collapse of Communist rule in the mid-1990’s were applauded. Some Afghans maintain that it was only after non-Afghans, especially Arabs, began to exert control over the movement in the late 1990’s that the Taliban became sinister and brutal. Memories of their early role might explain why many Afghans are prepared to turn a blind eye to their resurgence.

But it’s also important to remember that the insurgency consists of more than just the Taliban. To describe anti-coalition forces in the country as a single entity is to ignore their important differences and hamper our ability to negotiate. The Taliban are allied predominantly to the Pashtun ethnic cause, and their alliance with the relatively affluent Qaeda seems more a marriage of convenience than ideology, given Afghans’ mistrust of Arabs; another major jihadi group, the Hezb-i-Islami, seems interested above all in gaining power for its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

And just as Afghanistan itself is riven by ethnic divisions, within each group in the insurgency, tribe, clan or family membership often transcends other loyalties. These competing objectives afford us opportunities to split and co-opt these groups even as we seek militarily to deny them sanctuary in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we can’t do that if we lump them all together as terrorists.

It is often forgotten that before 9/11 there was an active round of international diplomacy aimed at engaging the Taliban. Then, as now, engagement did not mean endorsement.

In October 2000, the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, agreed to open indirect negotiations with the opposition Northern Alliance via the United Nations to try to halt the civil war. This failed in the main because of the Qaeda attack on the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen, and the realization that Afghanistan was increasingly under the sway of Osama bin Laden and dependent on his coffers.

This doesn’t mean that we should stop pressuring the Taliban militarily. But the West needs to take heed of one of the first principles of counterinsurgency: Know your enemy. They, too, have hopes, fears and aspirations that are not necessarily in conflict with our own, or, more important, the Afghan government’s. Where common ground can be identified, political accommodation and an end to the violence may just be achievable.

I fail to see what's so bad about it.

I fail to see how much hope there can be for a lasting peace in this region of the world if people are continuing to hold their tribal and ethnic affiliations in higher regard than anything else.

Like that doesn't happen here.

Why the eye roll at the article?? Didn't you read this part??


"It is often forgotten that before 9/11 there was an active round of international diplomacy aimed at engaging the Taliban. Then, as now, engagement did not mean endorsement. "

A member of the Taliban's religious police beating a woman in Kabul on August 26, 2001

Yes, they seem lovely to talk to.

I don't think engaging them worked.

Negotiations between enemy parties are a pretty standard course of action that often bring about resolution to conflict. The only real thing I dislike about the artice is that it doesn't really state anything that isn't obvious on some level. Its not a very in depth article.

Oh, and welcome back to N&D Poopy Pants.

Well, considering how the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, the draconian laws and oppression it enforced, the fact that it gave Osama Bin Laden a sanctuary to set up Terror Training Camps as well as the simple fact that the Taliban does not seek to work with the current government in any way makes "talking" to the Taliban pointless. Their ideology has no place in a Democratic, Free Afghanistan and therefore any of their input should not even be entertained.
Where would this go from here....negotiations with Osama Bin Laden in his cave and giving Iran a seat on the U.N. Security Council?

Neither did our recent war in Afghanistan, apparently.

"Negotiate" with the Taliban? Does anyone honestly believe they'll compromise anything?

Well, nobody has really given them any mechanism to "work with the current government", so it's hard to know what they might do given a channel to communicate.

I view this, and many of the other conflicts we've been discussing in recent weeks, as a lawyer. A professor once said to us "a trial is a failure", implying that if the lawyers had not failed in their pretrial negotiations the trial would not have been necessary. I think that a war can be viewed exactly the same way, as a failure.

Now sometimes a trial is necessary, because your adversary is unreasonable, or because you have an important point to make that is larger than the case itself, but 99% of the time a settlement can be reached before the pain and expense of a trial is undertaken, unless the lawyers are pig-headed and are seeking to fight for the sake of fighting. To be totally cynical, there are some unethical lawyers who press for a trial because they know that they are likely to make more money from a trial than from a settlement, and being that the rules of ethics for politicians are not quite as strict as they are for attorneys, this is more likely to happen in war than in law.

Point is, even throughout the trial, if it gets that far, it is common for negotiations to continue even between warring parties. The complete abandoning of negotiations reflects at least one a few problems.

- A pig headed desire to fight rather than resolve the conflict.
- A lack of intelligence and imagination for the resolution of the conflict on BOTH sides, because the imagination has only to exist on one side to engage an adversary interest in resolution.
- At least one party that KNOWS it is wrong and cannot afford to admit that fault and would rather continue to proclaim its righteousness in the face of a judgment against them.

In my opinion, all of these elements are present in one or another of the current wars the United States finds itself. In my opinion, there is NO virtue in refusing to negotiate. This does NOT mean that you have to give in to unreasonable demands in order to avoid war (as the right would like to paint it), but it does mean continually holding out an olive branch so that if the opponent decides that it finally is in his interests to be reasonable and see things our way, he has the opportunity to end the conflict as soon as it is possible.

It is always better to be seen as the party attempting to avoid the war, but being dragged unwillingly into it by an unreasonable opponent than to be seen as the aggressor who preferred war over peace. That is where the United States stands in the world today.

Wow. This post just completely owns this thread and probably several others as well.

Did you know Canadian soldiers are more likely to die in Afghanistan than US soldiers in Iraq?

That's because they only carry billy clubs.

We can at least agree in theory on the same form of government.

If I ever need a lawyer, I want you.

*hockey sticks

Nobody has given the Taliban a 'mechanism' to work with the current government? How is that? What - the Taliban couldn't have accepted the fact that they were no longer in power and participated in the elections with a hope that someday they could gain enough seats in a complete government structure and thus hold power? I don't remember former members of the ruling party being denied the right to vote.

The insinuation that the Bush Administration has flatly refused to negotiate....or pursue a diplomatic path....is flat out wrong. You are implying that after 9/11 President Bush led the country into wars without giving the opposition the chance to work with the US. First, the US gave the Taliban fair warning and the chance to turn Osama Bin Laden over to the United States. They refused. End of story, or should we have held out for a few years and let the terrorist training camps go on? Then there's Iraq. 17 UN resolutions defied. President Bush went to the UN and asked for that final resolution to get inspectors back into the country. They went in, but we quickly returned to the status quo and the inspectors were denied access to suspected weapons sites. Even right before the war, I remember the US giving Saddam Hussein and his sons time to get out of the country to avoid invasion. How long should we have held out that olive branch?

The President's response has been decisive and, I would say, not a diplomat's dream in terms of handling international affairs. Then again, to say that olive branches weren't extended right up to the point to where we engaged Afghanistan and Iraq is re-writing history.