Is there a viable solution to the Afghan problem?

fter Mullah Omar’s death, it was thought that Kabul could manipulate factionalism to destroy the Taliban

Let the international community and the regional powers that have high stakes in Afghanistan try something new — reconciliation among various Afghan groups, including what passes for the government there. For the last 35 years, the Afghans, regional players and the great powers, all have employed one familiar policy — using armed forces, supporting their favourite warring factions and intervening to bolster a weak government that has little public support. Nothing of this sort has worked in the past, nor will it in the future.

No realistic politician, policymaker or power has been genuinely interested in helping Afghanistan and its helpless people. The reconciliation effort must start after acknowledging some basic facts. Five facts about Afghanistan stand out clearly. First, the war has not ended. While the US and its coalition partners have ended their war mainly due to the fatigue factor and growing opposition back home to involvement in this remote conflict, the Afghan factions, which include the Afghan National Army, the Taliban and former and current warlords that have the backing of the Kabul authorities, continue to fight. Second, the war is not confined to the Pakhtun-dominated regions, from where the Taliban movement rose against the Mujahideen factions in the 1990s. The new, post-American war has new conflict zones in north-eastern and central Afghanistan. Third, the Pakhtuns form the largest part of the Afghan Taliban movement, but unlike in the past, the movement also has Tajiks, Uzbeks and members of other ethnic groups in its ranks. Fourth, the Afghan security forces are neither sufficiently equipped nor motivated enough to defeat the Taliban in a war of attrition that the international coalition has left unfinished. Finally, factional war in Afghanistan will continue to fuel regional intervention by states and non-state actors.

All internal stakeholders and external powers know what the ground realities in Afghanistan are. The problem is that states, self-interested power-seeking groups and warring factions with conflicting agendas tend to ignore facts; some do so because they profit from conflict and others live in a bubble of a self-imagined, unreal world. Given the high human and material costs of the several cycles of the Afghan conflict, only fools from either side will expect to win this endless war. Indeed, Afghanistan’s wars have produced no winners in the past and will never do so in the future.

The humanistic and realistic solution of the Afghan conflict lies in a negotiated political settlement. Those from within Afghanistan — the Taliban factions and the Kabul government — who refuse to sit together at the negotiating table, must have motives other than that of establishing a stable Afghanistan. Pakistan, along with China and the US, played a key role in getting the Taliban to the negotiating table. While initially the Afghans praised the first round of the talks and showed eagerness to return for the second, they left the process one evening before the dialogue was to resume with the news of Mullah Omar’s death becoming public. Perhaps, they thought the Taliban movement will be buried with the death of Mullah Omar. The subscript of the official strategy was that with the death of Mullah Omar, the inspiration and a unifying force for the Taliban, Kabul can manipulate factionalism to destroy the group. Good luck with that. This strategy is not new to Afghanistan and its failures are well-publicised.

The starting point of resolving the Afghanistan problem has to be Afghan reconciliation. It has three dimensions — the government, the Taliban, and the leaders of the ethnic minorities from the north of the country. The problem is that the government is not unified. It is factionalised and it possesses a weak will because there are conflicting visions and interests within the government. This factionalism has been at the root of all cycles of the Afghan conflict.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th,  2015.

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