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The unending war in Pakistan’s neighbourhood

With the world’s attention focussed on Pakistan in the wake of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, it has gone almost unnoticed that in Afghanistan next door, the Western military campaign against extremist forces (the sort who killed Benazir) has entered its seventh year with a warning from Lord (Paddy) Ashdown — tipped to be the joint United Nations-European Union envoy to Kabul — that the West has “lost” the war. And the fall of Kabul, he has warned, means that “Pakistan will also fall” with serious implications for the entire region.

After six years, there is now a tacit acceptance in Western capitals, barring Washington, that military action alone cannot deliver peace in Afghanistan and the “jackboot” policy preferred by the U.S. will not work, as indeed it has not worked in Iraq where Americans themselves have been forced to co-opt the disillusioned militant groups to tackle the Al-Qaeda hardcore.

The idea of talking to the Taliban is gaining ground but officially no government wants to be seen to be hobnobbing with the enemy. Hence the sort of contortions witnessed last week when Kabul expelled two senior Western officials (a U.N. political adviser and an EU envoy) after accusing them of holding meetings with Taliban leaders.

The expulsions coincided with a blazing row in Britain over reports that the British government too had been in “secret” talks with Taliban representatives, contrary to its publicly-stated policy of not negotiating with militants.

Claims in a front-page splash in The Daily Telegraph (December 26) that MI6 agents met senior Taliban figures “up to half a dozen times” over the summer embarrassed the government as only recently Prime Minister Gordon Brown categorically ruled out any talks with the Taliban. In a statement in the Commons on December 12, Mr. Brown was emphatic: “We will not enter into any negotiations with these people.”

Officially, this remains Britain’s position with the Foreign Office insisting that there is no change in the government’s policy of “not engaging” with the Taliban. That was also the line from the U.N. and the EU in the wake of the expulsions of their envoys on the ground that they posed a “serious threat” to national security because of their alleged links with Taliban leaders. Mervyn Patterson, who was a political adviser to the U.N. mission in Kabul, and Michael Sample, acting head of the EU mission at the time, were arrested during a visit to the Helmand province where, according to the provincial governor Aassadulla Wafa, they met Taliban leaders ignoring his warning.

A U.N. spokesman firmly rejected the charge. “We do not talk to the Taliban — full stop. That is not what we were in Helmand province to do,” said an angry Aleem Siddique, explaining the U.N. position. Whatever the truth in this case and the Telegraph’s claims, the developments are part of a larger problem — namely, the sheer impossibility of a military victory in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan.

After a six-year-long relentless campaign, representing the Western world’s combined military might, the “war” in Afghanistan is far from over with a rag-tag band of guerrillas (with almost no friends in the world beyond a fanatically-motivated tribal network) able to run rings round their sophisticated enemies. If anything, there has been a resurgence in the Taliban’s activity in recent months, inflicting heavy casualties on the coalition forces.

With body bags piling up and no prospect of an early end to the conflict in sight, there is growing pressure on governments whose troops are bogged down in Afghanistan to find an honourable way out. This means talking to the enemy. And that is what Britain and other European countries — and the U.N. — have been quietly doing as part of a covert strategy to weaken the Taliban by weaning away ( or “peeling off,” to use a diplomatic jargon) the less ideologically committed elements through dialogue and inducements, including cash payment to those willing to cooperate.

A crude form of back-channel diplomacy is going on behind the gung-ho rhetoric with Britain — as The Guardian reported — “quietly spearheading efforts to engage militants who are ready to quit the Taliban.” The U.N., it said, supported the “Taliban contacts.”

“The U.N. believes it is possible to separate the hardcore leadership linked to Al-Qaeda from less ideological commanders driven by money, nationalism or disaffection with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai,” the newspaper added.

This is corroborated by other media reports quoting Western diplomats and army officials on the ground — all making the point that there is no alternative to sitting down and talking to the fence-sitters in the enemy camp. “We are going to have to sit down and do business with people who we don’t like, and who don’t like us,” one diplomat told The Independent.

The MI6 agents and the two expelled diplomats were doing just that — trying to suss out potential defectors. In official parlance, this doesn’t pass for “talks,” “negotiations” or “engagement” but unofficially, the communication channels that the Western governments are trying to open up with the second and third rung of the Taliban are all very kosher.

Indeed, Mr. Karzai himself favours a policy of “reconciliation” and has offered talks with the Taliban. According to commentators, what the British and other European nations are doing fits in with the Karzai government’s bid to get the lower-ranking or less ideologically-driven members of the Taliban to give up arms and join the political process.

“What is really happening is that the government of President Hamid Karzai, supported by Britain and other members of the 40-nation international security force in Afghanistan, is attempting to ‘peel-off’ lower-ranking members of the Taliban who are less committed to the insurgency and might be persuaded to drop their weapons and join the political process,” The Times Defence Editor, Michael Evans, wrote pointedly emphasising that MI6 was very much part of these informal communication channels and was working “strictly in line with Kabul’s strategy of reconciliation.”

The British Foreign Office declined to be drawn into the Telegraph report saying that it did not comment on intelligence matters. But officials pointed out that given the nature of the situation in Afghanistan, it was not possible to avoid contacts with the Taliban altogether if the ultimate goal was to stop the insurgency and restore peace in the country.

“Given the character of a country such as Afghanistan, it would be inconceivable not to come across people who at some point will have had links to the Taliban, but that does not mean that we are following a policy of engagement with the Taliban,” an official said. Officials also stress that the British policy is fully in accord with the Karzai government’s attempts to “try to win over former members of the Taliban.”

The expelled diplomats’ activities too were part of this broader strategy. U.N. officials insist that the two were working in coordination with the Afghan government and that the expulsions were due to some “misunderstanding.” They appear to have been caught up in Afghanistan’s internal politics. Apparently, the provincial governor turned on them as he felt that they had not sought his permission to speak to the people in his own backyard.

Defending the conduct of the expelled diplomats, a U.N. spokesman made clear that a “reconciliation” was not possible without talking to the people on the ground. “We need the support of the local community and that means we need to talk to people on the ground and that means people who are supportive of the government and people who are less supportive. Those are the people they have to win over,” he said.

Analysts say that it is disingenuous to talk of “reconciliation” and then pretend, in the same breath, that no talks are taking place with the Taliban. Indeed, they point out, there is no such thing as a clearly identified monolithic force called Taliban. “The Taliban is at times as much a way of mind as it is a coordinated force, and to overcome it will need more than military might. It will require local negotiation and reassurance of just the kind the Secret Intelligence Service is said to have been carrying out. British politicians, from Gordon Brown down, are still wary of admitting as much,” The Guardian commented editorially echoing the widespread view that there is nothing dishonourable or embarrassing about talking to the opposition.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph made the same argument in an editorial headed “Britain cannot rule out talking to the Taliban.” “If such contacts offer the chance of peace, they should be pursued,” it argued.

In the words of Lord Ashdown, the success in Afghanistan should not be “measured in dead Taliban” and the really crucial battle is the “battle for public opinion.” Will the New Year see a greater focus on winning this battle?

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