How to Talk to the Taliban
An Office in Qatar Changes the Rules of the Game
Article Summary and Author Biography
The new Taliban office in Qatar could open the door for negotiation and bring the war in Afghanistan to a peaceful end. Despite the significant risks, it would still be better to move forward cautiously, rather than not engage at all.
MICHAEL SEMPLE, who has been working in Afghanistan for more than two decades, is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Snapshot
The looming U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan need not lead to instability. If it proceeds smartly, Washington can ensure that fewer U.S. soldiers will leave the country more secure, not less.
Snapshot
If confirmed, Mehsud's death could cause the Pakistani Taliban to break apart. Several actors, including the Pakistani government, the Afghan Taliban, and al Qaeda, appear ready to step in and mediate between factions. In every scenario, fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan would become more difficult.
Members of the Kabul High Peace Council, May 2011. (isafmedia / flickr)
Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid's announcement last week that the group will open a political office in Qatar is part of a process that could bring a peaceful end to the war in Afghanistan. To be sure, naysayers abound both in the region and in Washington. But, conditions in 2012, unlike those in years past, offer a realistic, if difficult, opening for a way forward.
For more than two years, Washington, NATO, and the Afghan government have conducted a kind of one-sided courtship, trying to bring the Taliban leadership to the table. Before the January 2010 London Conference, Kabul adopted a doctrine professing that the Taliban leadership was predominantly moderate and, accordingly, that reconciliation would be a priority. Afghan President Hamid Karzai followed up by publicly inviting the Taliban to talk, stage-managing jirgas that reinforced his message and shoehorning veteran anti-Taliban mujahideen leaders into a "peace council." Tepid at first, Washington eventually got on board, too.
But the Taliban never came to the table. In fact, the ill-fated process produced some disastrous results. Even so, in private discussions I had with some Taliban leaders, they took quite pragmatic stances, laying out what real negotiations would look like; there were positive hints about the Taliban's willingness to talk, too, in the group's published communiqués. But the latest announcement is a game-changer. It is unambiguous confirmation that the Taliban is taking real steps toward serious political engagement and reconciliation.
A process that leads to a reconciliation in Afghanistan, before NATO troops go home, might sound too good to be true. It might be too good to be true, in fact. But its chances now are better than they have ever been before...
