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Should we talk to the Taliban?

04 February 2010 04:28 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Amid the shock and anger that rose out of the deadly attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 there were immediate calls for revenge against the likely culprits - Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and the Taliban regime that allowed them to operate in Afghanistan, APA reports quoting abc.net.au web-page.

As the US commenced its carpet bombardment of Afghanistan, however, the Taliban expressed a willingness to hand bin Laden over provided the superpower gave evidence of his culpability. Any extradition, they added, would have to be to a neutral country and not the US.

The offer was flatly rejected back in October 2001, as was an earlier suggestion, mooted by the Taliban and sympathetic religious groups in neighbouring Pakistan, to try bin Laden before a domestic or international tribunal. Of course we have no way of knowing now whether those offers were genuine or even practical. But as US-led foreign and Afghan forces meander through an increasingly violent and destabilising war that has killed thousands of Afghans and hundreds of foreign nationals including 11 Australian diggers, there may be a great deal of regret over the decision to favour unilateral war over diplomacy. Over the last year Western planners have realised that there can be no end to the Afghan conflict in the foreseeable future unless there is dialogue with the Taliban.

But this is far from clear cut. On the one hand negotiating with the Taliban is a victory for realism. The Taliban may represent one of the most fanatical and oppressive streams of Islam, but they are now the dominant social movement from Afghanistan’s Pashtun population, the country’s largest ethnic group whose home lands in the south and east are major frontlines in the current conflict. Afghanistan cannot be stabilised without the input of its Pashtun population. For the foreseeable future, that means integrating the Taliban into the political framework. The tragedy is that, in large part, the Taliban’s support among Pashtuns has increased thanks to the presence of foreign armies in their country.

Clearly the military response to international terrorism has not worked. Once considered the good war, the conflict in Afghanistan is now a major political liability for foreign governments embroiled in it. A majority of voters in most International Assistance Force for Afghanistan countries, including Australia according to a poll conducted last March, want their troops to return home.

But these facts should not detract from other truths. There can be no doubt that the Taliban, and even many of the warlords ostensibly aligned with the pro-US regime in Kabul, pose a long term threat to the development of Afghanistan, and particularly its women and minorities. Even in Pashtun areas, like Kandahar and OrÅ«zgÄn provinces where most of our Australian forces are based, support for the Taliban is based not on ideology but on cultural affinities and the hope that the insurgents can improve living conditions more than the hopelessly corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai.

Karzai is a product of the US decision to unilaterally invade Afghanistan. Along with resentment towards the US for installing the Karzai regime, however, many Afghans are also openly hostile to regional powers, especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for promoting conflict in their country even after the Soviets left in 1989. Interestingly, Afghans view India more favourably than any other foreign presence in their country - up to 71 per cent of them according to one recent opinion poll - even more than the UN. There is a good chance this has something to do with the fact that India has no military presence in Afghanistan but has invested billions of dollars in developing the country’s civil infrastructure. India’s involvement in Afghanistan may not be charity, but in this case the soft power of development assistance has accrued enormous goodwill.

An extensive survey carried out by the Asia Foundation last year found that the central thing on Afghan minds is not the Taliban or the US but socioeconomics like access to education and employment for both men and women. And as author of The Kyte Runner Khalid Hossein points out, poverty is a far greater cause of death in Afghanistan than war.

In the rush to end this war it is important to remind ourselves that what Afghanistan needs is not an end to foreign involvement but an acceptance that it was a victim of the international community’s collective interference long before Osama plotted the September 11 attacks.

Talking to the Taliban should not mean appeasing extremists in exchange for a quick withdrawal. But solving the morally ambiguous will require a commitment to engage with all Afghans over a long period of time.