Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’
Posted on: November 29th, 2012 by Ernie Regehr
As the US, Canada, and others focus on the 2014 deadline for extracting their military forces from Afghanistan, the neglect of a credible political exit strategy threatens to push that troubled country still further down the path of escalating civil war.
A decade’s worth of UN-authorized military intervention has accompanied major change in Afghanistan, much of it for the better, but one thing foreign forces could not change (more…)
Posted on: January 7th, 2012 by Ernie Regehr
The news that the Taliban will open a political office in Qatar is rightly being welcomed as a watershed moment – even though it is a belated one, coming at the 10-year mark of the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan. The
pressing question now becomes, who will get a seat at the negotiating table
that will finally be set? It’s a question that should be of keen interest to
Canadians.
(more…)
Posted on: October 7th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
On this tenth anniversary of the start of the war against Taliban rule and an al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, the central strategy of those who started the war now comes down to mounting a force of 352,000 armed Afghans to take over all the fighting in 2014.
(more…)
Posted on: October 4th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is reviewing his strategy[i] for engaging the Taliban following their assassination of his chief peace envoy, High Peace Council (HPC) Chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani, in an attack that also severely injured the Director of the HPC Secretariat, Masoom Stanekzai.[ii] A review is in order – not to question the continued pursuit of a political settlement with the Taliban[iii], but to consider what a comprehensive peace process might actually look like. Three recent reports offer some compelling guides.
(more…)
Posted on: May 4th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has famously said the US can’t get out of its wars by capturing and killing its way to victory,[i] and in Afghanistan Canada and NATO will have to learn that you can’t train your way out of a war either.
(more…)
Posted on: December 29th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
From the earliest days of the current, and by all accounts undiminished, insurgency in Afghanistan, conventional wisdom has regarded Pakistan as a key, if not the key, to Afghan stability. But for Pakistan to become a part of the solution in Afghanistan, India will have to be recognized as part of the problem.
The recent White House review of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan[i] does not deviate from the conventional wisdom. Pakistan is once again declared to be central to US-ISAF[ii] counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan. At the same time a recently leaked intelligence estimate,[iii] also to no one’s surprise, reports that the Government of Pakistan remains unwilling to end its covert support for the Afghan Taliban and thus for ongoing instability.
Conventional wisdom isn’t wrong because it’s the convention, so it is hardly surprising that there are those who seek an escalation of US military operations in Pakistan,[iv] beyond the current drone war and operations by CIA-backed militias. Others find it more compelling to address what is behind Pakistan’s apparent determination to continue fomenting instability in Afghanistan.[v]
One of those more sober voices was that of the late Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region. Not long before his death he told Time Magazine writer Joe Kline that “the conflict [in Afghanistan] would only be resolved diplomatically, that equilibrium could only be reached in Afghanistan if the Pakistanis and Indians established better relations, and stopped seeing Afghanistan as a strategic prize.” Klein describes Holbrooke as “frustrated by the inability of all the regional players to understand that peace was in their best long-term interests (especially the Pakistanis, whose obsession with military matters–and paranoia about India–was crippling their ability to build the buoyant economy necessary for a stable state).”[vi]
In other words, justified or not, rational or not, Pakistan’s obsession with India – and vice versa – cannot help but be played out in Afghanistan. As the Carnegie Endowment’s Jessica Mathews recently reminded a forum on Afghanistan, “Pakistan’s principal strategic worry is not Afghanistan. It’s India.”[vii]
That does not need to imply that peace in Afghanistan must await the establishment of sweet harmony between India and Pakistan. Such a peace is obviously not imminent, but it is realistic, make that necessary, to work more effectively toward insulating the Afghan national conflict from surrounding regional conflicts and competition.
As Holbrooke suggested, the issue is not to first build Pakistani/Indian peace, rather it is to help both understand that to make Afghanistan an arena for their enduring conflict serves the interests of neither of them. Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation calls for a three-track diplomacy effort on Afghanistan: “talks with the Taliban groups, talks with the neighbours, and talks among all Afghan parties. Some efforts are already under way, but none is backed by a serious commitment from the key players: the Afghan government, the United States, Pakistan, India, Iran and China.[viii]
Reports that President Barack Obama used his recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh[ix] to appeal for a more constructive regional approach on Afghanistan are encouraging, as is Canada’s decision to include regional diplomacy as one of its four priorities for the next stage of Canadian involvement in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s involvements in Afghanistan are multi-dimensional, but it is unlikely to end its destabilization tactics as long as it fears that a stable Afghanistan will be aligned to India. Pakistan has a history, as US General David Petraeus also noted recently, of supporting non-state extremist groups as a hedge in its rivalry with India.[x]
And destabilization in Afghanistan, a country brimming with both grievances and weapons, is and will continue to be easy to foment. Pakistan will continue to have no difficulty finding political/military aspirants in Afghanistan ready to accept “help” and to undermine any government in Kabul that is potentially hostile or unfriendly to Pakistan. No military operation will be able to prevent it as long as Pakistan regards an unstable Afghanistan to be more in its interests than would be a stable Afghanistan with strong links to India.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
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[i] “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review,” The White House, 16 December 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/overview-afghanistan-and-pakistan-annual-review,
[ii] International Security Assistance Force.
[iii] Ken Dilanian and David S. Cloud, “U.S. intelligence reports cast doubt on war progress in Afghanistan,” Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/print/2010/dec/15/world/la-fg-afghan-review-20101215.
[iv] Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins, “U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan,” The New York Times, 20 December 2010.
[v] Nicole Waintraub, “India-Pakistan relations and the impact on Afghanistan,” The Ploughshares Monitor, Winter 2010, p. 13-15. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/pdf2010winter.pdf.
[vi] Joe Klein, “Holbrooke’s Last Words, Take Three,” Time Magazine Blog, 14 December 2010. http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/12/14/holbrookes-last-words-take-three/.
[vii] Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Afghanistan Strategy Review,” The Diane Rehm Show, 15 December 2010. http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=42146#.
[viii] Patrick Doherty, “Rethink ‘fight then talk’ in Afghanistan,” New America Foundation, Special to CNN, 16 December 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/16/doherty.afghan.strategy/index.html.
[ix] Haroon Siddiqui, “Obama plays Indian wild card on Afghanistan,” The Toronto Star, 19 December 2010. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/909121–siddiqui-obama-plays-indian-wild-card-on-afghanistan.
[x] “Mullen: Taliban Hideouts Can Be Shut Down,” Associated Press, 17 December 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=132086633.
Posted on: November 18th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
If Canada’s newly announced post-2011 military mission in Afghanistan is to amount to more than training Afghan forces for perpetual war, it needs to be Add the right supplement to enhance the nitric production in the blood vessels and blood flow into the levitra sales online supplementprofessors.com tissues, the organ gets denser and gains volume. It is the pills approved online pharmacy sildenafil by FDA for curing impotence in men. It’s a vital method to solve sexual cheapest viagra in uk supplementprofessors.com dysfunction. Specifically, exposure of even powder from a broken Propecia tablet to the skin of a pregnant cialis soft canada woman can cause abnormalities of the external genitalia of a male fetus. accompanied by a parallel diplomatic surge in pursuit of a political settlement of the conflict.
Read further at the Globe and Mail online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/since-we-cant-beat-the-taliban-focus-on-reconciliation/article1803418/.
Posted on: November 12th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
In an enviable display of political maturity, Afghans express overwhelming support for negotiations with insurgent groups, even as public sympathy for the insurgents and their aims and methods is in significant decline.
This is one conclusion to be drawn from the 2010 survey of Afghans conducted by The Asia Foundation.[1] The survey addresses, as it does annually, a broad range of issues; the findings on attitudes towards reconciliation and negotiations are especially timely in the context of recently reported speculations about political initiatives.
The survey found that “83 per cent of respondents support the government’s attempts to address the security situation through negotiation and reconciliation with armed anti-government elements.” A year ago that support stood at 71 per cent.
While support for negotiations increased by more than 10 percentage points, the level of sympathy for the insurgents with whom negotiations and reconciliation are sought dropped by 16 percentage points. The level of “sympathy with the motivations of armed opposition groups” fell from 56 per cent in 2009 to 40 per cent in 2010. The majority of the 2010 respondents (55 per cent) say they have no sympathy at all for armed opposition groups, a significant increase over 2009 when only 36 per cent they had no sympathy for insurgents.
A population that is losing sympathy for the Taliban is increasingly interested in negotiating with them. Thus, almost three quarters of all respondents (73 per cent) think that “the government’s reconciliation efforts will help stabilize the country.”
All of this suggests that Afghans are comfortable with the notion that the pursuit of peace requires that you talk with your adversaries – those with whom you have the deepest, most fundamental differences.
Not surprisingly, support for negotiations is highest in those areas where respondents are most like to declare that they have “some level of sympathy with the motivations of armed opposition groups” – and that sympathy is highest in the South West (where 52 per cent), the South East (50 per cent), and the West (50 per cent). Support for negotiation and reconciliation is thus highest in the East (89 per cnt), South East (85 per cent) and North West (85 per cent). Support for negotiations is lower in the Central/Hazarajat region (78 per cent), but is obviously still very high.
Reintegration efforts also enjoy broad support – that is, 81 per cent agree with programs that offer government assistance, including the provision of jobs and housing, to those insurgents who lay down arms and want to reintegrate into society. That is up from 71 per cent in 2009.
Musli sya: This ingredient is effective in providing relief from general debility and the go to link order cialis online roots of this ingredient is to improve blood supply in reproductive organs and solve many of the erectile dysfunctions. Discussing the current health will be helpful for a certain user yet it may be unhelpful for another. cialis sales uk cialis properien discover content In keeping with the fast pace of our life, our medications can reach our doorstep at our will. This is the only way viagra sildenafil that gives them a reason of avoiding depression that they have erectile problem and they find online remedies to solve this problem. Overall, reconciliation and reintegration programs have strong support among both men and women – 88 percent support from men and 78 percent from women.
The survey also indicates that the high level of support for negotiations does not imply any acquiescence to the limits on personal and public freedoms that are broadly associated with insurgent aims. Support for talks is matched by 81 per cent support for “the democratic principle of equal rights for all groups to participation and representation.” Support for “allowing peaceful opposition” stands at 83 percent.
A variety of gender-related issues were also addressed in the survey. It found, for example, that 87 per cent of respondents say they agree that women should have the same opportunities as men in education. The survey reports that 81 per cent of Afghans support equal rights under the law, regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion.
Support for negotiations, therefore, is not evidence of diminishing support for the freedoms that Government and international military forces say they are fighting for; instead, it is fair to say that Afghans simultaneously reject the Taliban, value freedom and equality, and favour negotiations.
It seems Afghans have the idea that prospects for achieving freedom and equality, and peace, are better at the negotiating table than on the battlefield.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[1] “Afghanistan in 2010: A Survey of the Afghan People,” Key Findings, The Asia Foundation. http://asiafoundation.org/country/afghanistan/2010-poll.php
Posted on: November 1st, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is said to be planning to set out his Government’s plans for the post-2011 Afghanistan Mission in advance of the Summit Meeting of NATO Heads of State and Government in Lisbon on 19-20 November 2010.[i]
The context for setting future priorities for Canada’s Afghan mission is not only Canada’s impending military withdrawal, it is also the admission, made almost two years ago by Mr. Harper, that the war in Afghanistan will not lead to the defeat of the insurgency.[ii] More recently, Richard Holbrook, the US special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the same,[iii] as have many others.
That means that the objective of the current military surge is not to defeat the insurgency, but to set it back on its heels. A stalled insurgency, the reasoning goes, would create more favorable conditions for weaning fighters away from the insurgency (reintegration[iv]) and for inducing their leaders to seek negotiations with the Government of Afghanistan and its international partners to end the war (reconciliation[v]).
Not all agree it is a workable strategy. Matt Waldman, formerly of Oxfam in Afghanistan, writes in a US Institute for Peace briefing that “field research indicates that the coalition’s military surge is intensifying the conflict, and compounding enmity and mistrust between the parties. It is therefore reducing the prospects of negotiations, which require confidence-building measures that should be incremental, structured and reciprocal.”[vi]
The implication is that the priority now should be to upgrade diplomacy and to focus on improved governance, services, and reconstruction measures, especially in those areas of the country where the insurgency is not a strongly debilitating presence. In other words, programs and activities that build confidence in a stable future, rather than intensified fighting, are what is needed to set the stage for the serious pursuit of a political settlement. The years of military effort to downgrade the Taliban have parallelled the insurgency’s steady ascent. So much so, says Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani author, journalist, and expert on the entire region, that the Taliban are now a nationwide movement.[vii]
The debate about the impact of the “surge” will not be quickly resolved – for example, the New York Times has run prominent stories of new success in routing the Taliban[viii] — but Ahmed Rashid goes on to say that despite the significant advances and spread of the insurgency, the Taliban may have hit both a military and political wall: “Taliban leaders may also realize that they are now at their apogee. They are a nationwide guerilla insurgency, but they cannot take or control major population centres given NATO’s firepower. There is no populist insurrection they can lead against US forces as there was in Iraq – the majority of Afghans do not want the return of a Taliban regime.”[ix]
If this analysis is correct, Afghanistan fits the classic “hurting stalemate.” The Government of Afghanistan and its international partners, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) cannot defeat the Taliban and the Taliban cannot defeat the Government and its international security backers. It’s a stalemate that is politically and economically hurting both sides and calls out for a political solution.
That, in fact, is the central reality that should guide those planning Canadian policy for Afghanistan after 2011.
In August a leaked Government draft[x] proposed that after 2011 Canada focus on four priorities (down from the current six):
• Securing a future for Afghan children and youth,
• promoting regional diplomacy,
• advancing the rule of law and human rights, and
• delivering humanitarian assistance.
All are worthy and urgent. The reconciliation priority would, in this approach, focus on regional diplomacy – also very important and essential to future stability.
But the political way out of the currently stalemated war has a chance of being stable and durable only if that political process is transparent, inclusive of Afghans from all sectors of society, and respectful of the civil and human rights that are acknowledged around the world as basic to stable governance and the safety and well-being of people. Any such political process must be Afghan led, as Ottawa has rightly insisted, but Canada and the international community have an important role to play in encouraging a constructive and inclusive process.
So how should Canada shape its post-2011 mission in Afghanistan?
In the first instance, as a country that has invested heavily in the future of Afghanistan and has acknowledged at the highest level that the war is not winnable and that diplomacy is required, Canada needs to find a public voice to actively encourage pursuit of a transparent and inclusive reconciliation process.
Second, an important way for Canada to engage more directly in support of reconciliation efforts would be for the Foreign Minister to appoint a special diplomatic envoy on Afghanistan.[xi] In addition to monitoring and supporting regional diplomacy, part of the mandate of the envoy should be to encourage the Government of Afghanistan, as well as civil society, to develop mechanisms for an inclusive and consultative approach (Canada has used special envoys in other contexts, for example in Sudan during the negotiations toward the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to monitor and observe talks and work with an international Friends of Sudan Group).
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Third, given that Afghan civil society has already emphasized that for the people of Afghanistan to have confidence in a reconciliation process it must be transparent as well as inclusive, Canada should pledge financial support for building up the institutional capacity of Afghan civil society to engage actively in any forthcoming peace process. For civil society to be an effective participant it must have the organizational capacity to monitor the reconciliation process, to hold public forums and consultations, and to generally give leadership to citizen involvement in a process that will forge a new future for their country. That capacity can obviously be aided by financial support and international partnerships and Canada should make both a focus of its support.
And finally, community-level reconciliation, reintegration, and confidence building throughout the country are important, both to address local conflicts and concerns and to generate local support for and input into a national process. Canadian financial support for Afghan and international organizations that bolster local governance mechanisms, peacebuilding, and dialogue, and that have a capacity to work with traditional and informal authorities at local and district levels, should be part of our support for the reconciliation process. Ownership and leadership are not confined to national structures. Recognition of the traditions and advantages of decentralized governance in Afghanistan, along with the significant potential for local and informal authorities to serve as vehicles for conciliation, is part of the process of encouraging Afghan ownership of any reconciliation processes.
Canada is not positioned to play a decisive role in the move towards talking and reconciliation in Afghanistan, but we can most certainly play an important supportive role. And that support should be an increasing, indeed central, part of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan going forward.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] Murray Brewster, “Afghan counterterror role might fly with war-weary Canadians: Diplomat,” Toronto Star.com, Canadian Press, 31 October 2010.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/883785–SOMNIA.
[ii] Canada’s Harper doubts Afghan insurgency can be defeated, CNN.Com, 1 March 2009. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/03/02/canada.afghanistan/index.html.
[iii] CNN, Afghanistan Blog, 25 October 2010. http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/25/holbrooke-nothing-close-to-formal-peace-talks/.
[iv] In the Afghan context, reintegration is understood, not as a post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding enterprise, but as a tactical counterinsurgency initiative. It is pursued as a war-time effort to persuade rank-and-file insurgents to quit fighting and lay down their arms in exchange for promises of personal safety, immunity, employment, and other financial incentives. A recent US Congressional Research Service report puts it rather directly: the focus is on the “reintegration of fighters amenable to surrendering.”Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, The United States Congressional Research Service, 21 July 2010. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf.
[v] In the Afghan context, reconciliation is diplomacy that seeks to engage insurgency leaders in pursuit of a political settlement that will end the fighting.
[vi] Matt Waldman, Navigating Negotiations in Afghanistan, USIP PeaceBrief 52, 13 September 2010. http://www.usip.org/publications/navigating-negotiations-in-afghanistan.
[vii] Ahmed Rashid, “Meeting the mullahs takes more than meets the eye,” The Globe and Mail, 22 October 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/meeting-the-mullahs-takes-more-than-meets-the-eye/article1769959/.
[viii] Carlotta Gall, “Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region,” The New York Times, 20 October 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/asia/21kandahar.html.
[ix] Ahmed Rashid, “Meeting the mullahs takes more than meets the eye.”
[x] Steven Chase, “Ottawa maps out post-combat role in Afghanistan,” The Globe and Mail, 24 August 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-maps-out-post-combat-role-in-afghanistan/article1682861/.
[xi] The Liberal Opposition encouraged the Government to use the occasion of the January 2010 London Conference to announce the appointment of a Canadian special envoy to lead Canadian efforts related to governance and reconciliation and, more broadly, Canada’s post-2011 involvement in Afghanistan. “Liberals call for special envoy to Afghanistan,” http://www.liberal.ca/newsroom/news-release/liberals-call-for-special-envoy-to-afghanistan/.
Posted on: July 8th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
The coming months will no doubt bring some extravagant pleas from certain Afghan and NATO politicians that Canada not follow through on the commitment to withdraw its combat forces from Afghanistan in 2011, but an effective antidote to such pressures is available in beefed-up diplomacy.
“You have to finish the job,” says Ahmad Wali Karzai – head of the Kandahar provincial council, half brother to President Hamid Karzai, controversial politician, entrepreneur with rumored links to the drug trade, and survivor of at least one assassination attempt.
“What we are fighting is not only the enemy of Afghanistan. This is the enemy of the world. This is the enemy of every human being so don’t leave us alone,” Wali Karzai told a Canadian journalist. “You have to be committed to what you promised. You cannot leave in the middle and say, ‘I’m packing it in’.” [i] He warns that the Taliban are already claiming victories in the face of planned departures of international troops.[ii]
Canada’s Ambassador William Crosbie, on the other hand, points to other Taliban with a less triumphalist outlook: “I know myself, through our own contacts with Taliban, commanders who want to lay down their arms, and what they say to us through third parties is we’re tired of fighting. ‘We know we can’t win. We want to come back to our families but who’s going to protect us from the other insurgents; who is going to protect us from the Afghan security forces [and] from ISAF?’” [iii]
A widely-respected and clear-thinking realist in the diplomatic community in Afghanistan, Amb Crosbie was speaking of amnesty or reintegration prospects, but he also told the Canadian Press that reconciliation is key to resolving the Afghan conflict. To be sure, he urged caution and the need for diplomacy to meet strict conditions, and in particular he emphasized the importance of process in any talks. A reconciliation or peace process focused only on the Karzai Government and the Taliban leadership is “a recipe for disaster,” he said.
Because it is “process [that] will determine the outcome,” he said, for there to be an outcome that serves the interests, and has the confidence, of all Afghans it must necessarily come out of a process that involves the broad cross-section of Afghans. He told the Canadian Press that a constructive process must:
-be internally inclusive and involve all ethnic groups, as well as women: “It has to be a reconciliation among Afghans to come back to build the future of their country in a way that each ethnic and women’s group feels it respects their interests;”
-involve the international community, especially in winning the cooperation of Afghanistan’s neighbors: “The Afghans are never going to have peace or reconciliation in their country unless the neighbors support the future we’re trying to create.”
-be given time – especially since “the government is in a weak position, particularly in the south”
Canadian NGOs have long been similarly encouraging political dialogue that extends to regional actors, engages all sectors of Afghan society, is thorough or comprehensive enough to convincingly address the full range of grievances, and that is also supported or guided by the UN. Back in 2008, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs recommended that Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan – diplomatic, military, and development – be specifically oriented toward creating “conditions favorable to a peace process.” It asked Canada to make “a concrete commitment to promote…broad-based negotiations,” nationally and in local communities, and to “encourage dialogue among all sectors of Afghan society and all communities of interest, and thereby help to establish conditions conducive to peace negotiations.”[iv]
For Canada to take up that challenge with some renewed energy would be one of the best ways to deflect pressures to continue combat operations.
By now, the main argument against talks with insurgents is one of timing, or “ripeness” – the point at which the parties conclude that they are in a “mutually-hurting stalemate” from which they all want to escape. But because the insurgency is now strong and ascendant, the argument goes, that ripeness will not be present until the insurgents are beaten back through intensified action on the battlefield and more persuasive enticements to individual insurgents to defect.
The Ambassador’s analysis of war weariness among some Taliban, confirmed by separate direct conversations with Afghans close to insurgent communities, suggests the situation is probably not so far from a hurting stalemate, and, in any case, intensified military action is not having the desired effect of downgrading the insurgents. Furthermore, the timing argument easily becomes an argument against negotiations in principle, opposing talks with either an ascendant or a retreating Taliban. On the one hand, some argue there is no point in talking to an ascendant insurgency because it will be disinclined to compromise; on the other hand, others will be just as insistent there is no need to negotiate or seek compromise with retreating insurgents.
There are also few prospects for large-scale defections through amnesty programs.[v] “Peace cannot come to Afghanistan through the junior Taliban,” says a former Taliban governor who did in fact defect. Peace efforts “will bear no fruit if the Taliban leaders are not involved and listened to…Peace will not come to Afghanistan until you speak to the Taliban leaders and show sincerity,” he said.[vi]
The UN Secretary-General’s 2009 report on mediation also questions the “hurting stalemate” theory, saying it has “turned out to be costly for all concerned, since opportunities for early resolution [are] lost and…stalemate[s] sometimes lead, instead, to intractability.” The Secretary-General says the hurting stalemate “concept has now been reformulated to take into account the role that third parties can play in cultivating and fostering ripeness at an early stage through the introduction of new ideas, skills, resources, and creativity.”[vii]In other words, creating the conditions for constructive negotiations is at least as much a matter of diplomacy as it is of coercion.
What’s needed now is a third party with some of those new ideas and creativity. Waiting is not likely to produce a better outcome. In fact, as has been argued in this space before, there is little evidence to support the idea that delaying the pursuit of talks will produce negotiating advantages for the Government of Afghanistan and its international backers. The opposite is just as likely to happen; the longer talks or the active pursuit of them are delayed the greater the likelihood that powerbrokers on both sides will be drawn to backroom deals to divvy up power among themselves. No one is talking about a quick process – a comprehensive peace process involving all sectors of society in pursuit of enough national consensus to end the fighting is a time consuming enterprise, and it in turn is simply the prelude to a generations long effort to build a reasonably just and participatory society.
eregehr@ploughshares.ca
Notes
[i] Bill Graveland, “‘Don’t leave us alone’; Afghan president’s brother asks Canada to extend mission,” The Toronto Star, 6 July 2010. http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/832775.
[ii] “Taliban rule out peace talks with NATO,” Mail Online, 1 July 2010.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1291080/Taliban-rule-talks-Nato-Why-winning.html.
[iii] “Canadian ambassador worries Taliban talks ‘going too far, going too fast’,” The Globe and Mail, Canadian Press, 05 July 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/canadian-ambassador-worries-taliban-talks-going-too-far-going-too-fast/article1628408/?cmpid=rss1.
[iv] Canada in Afghanistan: Report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development; Chair, Kevin Sorenson, MP (July 2008, 39th Parliament, 2nd Session).
[v] Steve Coll, Interview with National Public Radio, “Should the US try to Negotiate with the Taliban,” 29 June 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128196663.
[vi] Sayed Slahuddin, “Ex-Taliban governor sees little hope for Afghan peace,” Reuters, 6 July 2010.http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKSGE65S0AY._CH_.2420.
[vii] Report of th Secretary-General on enhancing mediation and its support activities, UN Security Council, 8 April 2009 (S/2009/189).
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