U.S.-Afghan peace buyouts may be ending

Plan to buy off former fighters cost $200 million

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Faridoon Hanafi says he probably killed American soldiers as a Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan from 2009 through 2014. And he’s certainly killed some Afghan troops.

But since then, Hanafi has joined a rare demographic here: reformed Islamist militants.

After he handed over his assault rifles and grenade launchers, Hanafi settled into a safe house and started collecting $200 a month. In return for those payments, funded with foreign aid, Hanafi worked with local officials in Nangarhar province to try luring other militants away from the fight.

Now, the money is drying up, and a central goal of the U.S.-led effort to rebuild Afghanistan — that Islamist militants can be rehabilitated or paid off to reintegrate into the law-abiding public — is at a crossroads as the war drags into its 15th year.

“If the government stops paying, these people will find another way to get money, and negotiations will fail,” Hanafi said in an interview.

‘Just too little’

Two months ago, after the United States and other countries had invested about $200 million in the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, the six-year effort was effectively suspended while officials reassess its goals.

The suspension comes amid broader scrutiny here and in Washington of deradicalization efforts as the Taliban leadership shuns peace talks and parts of Afghanistan drift even deeper into the grip of extremist ideology.

“The society and symptom is just too big, and the medicine that is provided is just too little,” said Ali Mohammad, an Afghan security analyst.

The program, carried out by an Afghan council set up to push for peace talks, included payments to former militants, the hiring of hundreds of local mediators, and tens of millions of dollars for public services in militant strongholds.

But just 11,077 militants have entered into the program, and officials of what is called the High Peace Council can’t be sure how many remained loyal to the government. In a country awash in weapons, only 9,800 have been handed over. Auditors have also struggled to track how the public-works money, including $50 million from the United States, has been spent.

As officials re-evaluate the program this summer, they have stopped payments to the mediators who formed the backbone of its operations. The High Peace Council is still technically operational — the United States rushed in $5 million to pay administrators — but payments to former Taliban fighters have been suspended, said Faradullah Farhad, deputy chief executive of the HPC.

“We are assessing our past to redesign our future,” Farhad said.

A return to arms?

The international effort is also struggling to achieve results because it largely overlooks the influence that Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran wield to stir up fundamentalist passions in Afghanistan, said Mohammad, the security analyst.

Deradicalization, he said, “has failed, and the reason it has failed is because we don’t go to the root causes of the radicalization, which are the policies of these countries that support it.”

But the Obama administration has appeared reluctant to take on Saudi Arabia or Pakistan over this issue. Instead, the administration is spending some $33 million in Afghanistan on Countering Violent Extremism programs, which sponsor cultural, entertainment and educational efforts — from a local version of Sesame Street to skateboard lessons. But millions of dollars also go to more shadowy initiatives that seek to bolster moderate clerics or help Afghan politicians and media personalities draft public messages.

“Without seeing better evidence, I am going to be skeptical these programs are having much of an impact,” said Seth Jones, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corp., a California-based think tank.

HPC officials say even a scaled-down reintegration program would likely require an additional $50 million to $75 million from international donors.

If money doesn’t arrive, Hanafi says he will look elsewhere for help — maybe taking up arms again.

“But not the Taliban,” he cautioned. “We may have to do some sort of independent militia.”