Talk to the Taliban

A group of tribal leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan have called for talks with the Taliban. These leaders convened in Kabul from August 9-12 in a U.S.-brokered peace Jirga, a traditional council akin to a parliament of elders. At the Kabul meeting, the Jirga formed a 50-member Tribal Council, made up of 25 members each from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to begin the dialogue.

The call does not spell out the talks’ schedule, scope, substance, or venue. Meanwhile, the Taliban has rejected the Jirga as a “U.S.-sponsored farce.” It is opposed to the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance government in Kabul and wants troops led by the United States and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to leave Afghanistan. This issue of foreign troop withdrawal was controversial at the Jirga. Although carefully screened by their respective governments, a smattering of Jirga members did manage to articulate their support for the Taliban’s call for foreign troops to leave, which they wished to replace with those of Islamic countries.

Many obstacles remain in the path of opening talks with the Taliban. The peace Jirga in Kabul is subject to conflicts between the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as pressures from the great powers. For all its shortcomings, though, the Jirga’s call for greater dialogue and its wide representation from both sides of the border suggests that it could serve as a key mechanism for resolving the swath of conflicts across Southwest Asia.

Call to Replace Foreign Troops

The key conflict at the peace Jirga was the issue of foreign troops and Pakistan’s behind-the-scenes support for withdrawal. On April 8, London’s Daily Telegraph, reported that Pakistan had urged the United Kingdom and the United States to pull out of Afghanistan. The suggestion, according to the newspaper, “reflects the growing belief in Islamabad that NATO is as much to blame for the endurance of the Islamic rebel army as Pakistan.” In public, however, Pakistan is more circumspect. A day before the Telegraph’s report, Khurshid Kasuri, Pakistan’s foreign minister, said: “NATO should consider holding talks with Taliban leaders.” He added that “Britain in particular should know the limitations of a purely military approach in Afghanistan.” This nuanced caution refers to Britain’s three failed military campaigns in Afghanistan since the beginning of the 20th century.

Britain, however, taps into a different history of its conflicts to determine the length of its stay in Afghanistan. Drawing on his country’s military campaign against the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a senior British commander estimates that Britain will need “38 years” to pacify the Taliban in Afghanistan. Minority ethnic communities in Afghanistan, especially Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras would welcome Britain’s long-term commitment. The Taliban, who are predominantly drawn from the majority ethnic group of Pashtuns, opposes such resolve. Also, neighboring countries are likely to resist British intent.

Pakistan wants to see foreign troops leave, as their presence has increased its archrival India’s influence with Kabul while diminishing its own. If foreign troops depart from Afghanistan, the 35,000-strong Afghan National Army will be hard put to hold back the Taliban. Absent external forces, they are bound to reclaim Kabul, and with it restore Islamabad’s traditional strategic advantage. At a still larger scale, China and Russia are also getting impatient with the foreign presence in Afghanistan. In 2005, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China and Russia as members, asked that the United States and NATO give a timetable for withdrawal of their forces. The Jirga’s call for replacing NATO-U.S. troops with Islamic forces resonates in these larger circles.

Karzai-Musharraf Bickering

Kabul has long accused Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military ruler, of harboring Taliban leadership in southwestern Pakistan, which borders southern Afghanistan. In a Newsweek interview in last September, President Karzai faulted Musharraf for failing to act against senior Taliban leaders. “Mullah Omer is, for sure, in Quetta, Pakistan, and he (Musharraf) knows that. We have given him the GPS (geographical positioning system) numbers of his house and the telephone number.” Musharraf dismissed the charge as “baseless.” In a CNN interview, he retaliated by saying that Karzai “is behaving like an ostrich.” Later, he sardonically counseled him to “put your own house in order,” a veiled reference to Kabul’s and NATO-U.S. troops’ failure to end violence in Afghanistan.

This bickering between the two persuaded President George W. Bush to move quickly to calm passions on both sides. Last September, he hosted an Iftar dinner breaking the fast of Ramadan at the White House for Karzai and Musharraf. By then both had grown so far apart that they stopped speaking to each other, except for trading barbs of criticism. At the dinner, President Bush pleaded with both to end their acrimony and join forces in common cause of fighting terrorism.

For a time, his persuasion seemed to work. A hopeful signal came from President Karzai, who proposed that Afghanistan and Pakistan convene a joint Jirga of the tribal leaders, who are living on both sides of the Durand Line that divides his country from Pakistan, to enlist their support against terrorism. The proposal froze Gen. Musharraf in his tracks. Yet President Bush warmed to the idea, which eventually pushed Musharraf, also, to tag along.

Musharraf’s Indifference

Musharraf’s reluctance to the call for a Jirga sprang from his non-existent influence with this institution. In contrast, Karzai, who commands immense popularity with the tribal leaders of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, wanted to actively engage them in peace efforts to end the violence in Pashtun territories. He considers tribal leaders to be the foundation of Pashtun culture and believes in their primacy over all other cultural and political institutions to resolve internecine conflicts. Since 2002, when he came to power in Afghanistan, Karzai has attempted to revive this institution, which earned him many critics among the international community and beyond. Despite growing detractors of his approach, he continues to stick to his conviction that the Jirga is the most effective tool in Pashtun society for conflict resolution.

Karzai is unhappy that Musharraf has contributed to “destroying Afghan culture” and its hallmark institution of the Jirga. Musharraf, who was born in India and migrated as a child to Pakistan, lacks any ethnic base in the country. Viewing the general as a “rootless carpetbagger,” the tribal leaders don’t treat him as their equal. In the volatile northwestern Pakistan, especially North and South Waziristan, hundreds of Pashtun tribal leaders instead pledge their allegiance to Afghanistan and the Afghan president.

Musharraf has been ambivalent about the success of the proposed Jirga from the very outset and has spared no effort to undermine its authority. First, he delayed convening it for ten months. Second, he let the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, name the delegates to the Jirga, including a substantial number of ISI agents themselves. Third, he failed to name even a single delegate from North and South Waziristan, where the United States suspects al-Qaeda is regrouping. As a result, all of the 70 tribal leaders of Waziristan agencies stayed away from the Jirga.

Finally, Musharraf pulled out of the event only a day before it opened on August 9, citing “pressing commitments” in Islamabad, which turned out to be his plan to impose emergency rule in Pakistan. The Bush administration was baffled by his last-minute walkout. It took a telephone call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the early hours of August 9 to change his mind on both emergency rule in Pakistan and abstaining from the Jirga. By August 9, however, only 175 of the planned 350 Pakistani delegates made it to the Jirga.

Success or Failure?

If the Jirga was not a complete success, it was not a failure either. After all, it was the grandest gathering of Pashtun leaders since the Durand Line was drawn in 1893 to divide Pashtun territories between Afghanistan and the British Raj. The lineup included preeminent Pashtun leaders who tower over even Karzai and Musharraf: Senator Asfandyar Wali Khan, who leads the Awami National Party (ANP), and Mehmood Khan Achakzai, who heads the Pashtun Milli Awami Party (PMAP). Both scorn Musharraf for dumping Arab and non-Arab al-Qaeda members into Pashtun tribal areas and then committing what they call “genocide” against Pashtuns by ruthlessly bombing them.

The Jirga, which represented the 50 million Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line, further bolstered the standing of Karzai as a Pashtun leader. His embrace by the leading lights of the Pashtun nation sends a strong message to the Taliban that they do not have a monopoly on Pashtun nationalism.

Finally, from the U.S. standpoint, the Jirga was a success for its unequivocal commitment to end terrorism and eliminate al-Qaeda from Pashtun territories. Since 9/11, no such commitment was ever made at such a grand forum of Pashtun leaders. The Jirga’s call shatters the vogue idiom of “Pashtun terrorists,” “tribal bandlands,” and “lawless tribal areas” that cast Pashtuns in bad light. At the Jirga, Pashtuns demonstrated their stake in peace within and between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yet the Jirga was “long on generalities and short on specifics.” U.S. and NATO leaders should engage this institution to supply the missing “specifics” to foster peace. It is deceptively simple to dub the Afghan resistance as "Taliban militancy," or "al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism." Although Pashtuns reject al-Qaeda and its terrorism, as the Kabul Jirga resoundingly demonstrated, they are resentful of their loss of power in Kabul, which they held for 200 years, to an ethnic minority-dominated and U.S.-backed Northern Alliance. The Taliban, who are predominantly Pashtuns, are drawing on this sense of exclusion among their majority community to sustain their struggle. An ethnic balance to the current distribution of power, therefore, will help drain the Afghan resistance of energy and serve as well the long-term security interests of the Northern Alliance.

Afghan President Karzai, aided by the 50-member Tribal Council, is best placed to pull off this feat. He is a devout Muslim, a former cabinet officer of the Taliban government, a member of the Pashtun royalty, a nominee of the ruling Northern Alliance, and the only hope for the international community to bring peace in Afghanistan. He already has been in discrete talks with the Taliban and with Hizb-i-Islami leader and former prime minister of Afghanistan Gulbadin Hikmatyar. His outreach is, however, unsupported by the international community, especially the Bush administration. Now that Asfandyar Wali Khan and Mehmood Achakzai -- the two most influential Pashtun leaders who are pro-Afghanistan, pro-Karzai secular nationalists -- have added their voices to the call for talks with the Afghan resistance, the international community and especially the Bush administration should take notice.