US has tied itself in knots as the Taleban emerge stronger
One can only hope, having watched, covered and written about the Afghan war for a decade-and-a-half, that US President Donald Trump has not really timed peace and withdrawal to suit his re-election campaign. Also that he thinks Pakistan might be good for more than just exercising influence over the Taleban. If Trump thinks something will make him look good, he’ll do it, regardless of the mess on the ground; think occupied Jerusalem, Golan, etc. But rolling out of Afghanistan will need more than an executive order. So far the way he’s got his special peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, hopping from place to place is making nice headlines at home, but it’s also giving the Taleban more legitimacy than they could have imagined till late last year.
That’s when Trump brought Zalmay back to the Afghan theatre — he’s a former US ambassador to Afghanistan. Till then the understanding was that though the bad guys were taking more land every year, very worrisome indeed, there was really no way they could take the capital. And as long as there was Nato air power and US special forces, the worst that could happen was a prolonged stalemate.
The government didn’t have much say beyond the capital in the best days, so nothing had really changed. Except that Trump didn’t like the $45 billion (conservative estimate?) annual drain on the treasury at all. The new smart idea was negotiating an end with the Taleban.
Just for the record, when Gen Musharraf proposed talking to them back in the day, Bush and Blair got very upset, and the Western press went ballistic about ISI supporting the Taleban. How the mighty can shift their own goalposts and pat themselves on the back for it.
But now that they were going to talk to the Taleban, they threw in the added sweetener of getting Afghan President Ghani to offer peace as well, that too before the election (due this year). Taleban commanders, quite naturally, took this as an acknowledgement of their fine resistance, and put terms of their own for peace.
Nothing short of complete pullout of all foreign forces would stop their snowballing insurgency, they said, and ruled out any contact whatsoever with the “puppet” Afghan government. In fact, they wanted an interim setup to oversee the talks. How silly did that make Ghani look and, no doubt, feel?
Suddenly the Taleban had a voice and an audience. Countries that never recognised their government when they held Kabul were now hosting peace talks. Yet everywhere, all the time, they rejected the Afghan government and constitution.
Surely Zalmay, who spent his childhood and youth in Kabul, could see where this was going. Still he kept indulging the Taleban as if he was on the clock. That’s when chatter about wrapping up the war before the US election first emerged.
Soon key players like Pakistani PM Imran Khan were also backing the interim government suggestion. Ghani got angry enough to recall his ambassador from Islamabad.
Now, after pushing the election down to September, he’s left wondering if the Americans are really going to force the unwinding of the Afghan government and constitution; undoing a process Washington itself started with the Bonn Conference of 2001 that propped up Hamid Karzai.
Yet there was Karzai, mixing with the Taleban along with other Afghan notables, even saying prayers behind the Taleban delegation head (very symbolic?). Of course, the Afghan government was not invited.
It seems, from Zalmay’s latest appearance in the news, that all the US wants from the Taleban is a commitment that the country will never again be used for terrorism or attacks on the US. And, of course, they’ll respect human, gender and animal rights. Ghani’s now called a loya Jirga (grand counsel) but the Taleban have already taken the air out of it. And, guess what, the Americans are still playing ball with them, as if they’ve already decided to let the Afghans sort out their own internal mess. They’ve done it before.
Suppose the Americans really try to time this with the election. Trump does what two two-term presidents couldn’t. Another campaign promise kept. But wouldn’t that catapult the Taleban to the centre? And wasn’t their inability to take Kabul, even if they kept fighting forever, the only feel-good factor in this trillion-dollar nightmare?
Pakistan has never really been able to convince the Taleban about anything really important; from handing over Osama before the war to being more flexible now
Surely nobody’s forgotten that the Taleban are the stronger military power in the country. What’s to stop them from employing the chokehold once more when the Americans are gone; arguing that the need these measures to honour the peace terms?
What will they do? Get on the phone with Islamabad again? Truth be told, Pakistan has never really been able to convince the Taleban about anything really important; from handing over Osama before the war to being more flexible now. Will Washington once more punish Pakistan for its failure in Afghanistan?
In just over six months Zalmay has made his president happy but he’s also sowed the seeds of great instability in Afghanistan and, down the road, Pakistan. To think Trump initially considered him for secretary of state.
Hopefully the Trump administration will employ a more realistic election strategy and a more able AfPak envoy.