In Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes, I explored a half-century’s history of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes and terrorist groups. Whether a Republican or a Democrat sat in the Oval Office, and whether the regime was in the Middle East or Asia, one pattern emerged: Once the United States launched a high-profile diplomatic process, the State Department almost always refused to abandon it and never would take no for an answer. Indeed, the history of intelligence politicization shows that politicians and diplomats far more often twist and cherry-pick intelligence to support continuing diplomacy than to push toward military action. When a special envoy monopolized a process which could bring him glory and prestige — be it with the Iranians under President Barack Obama or the Palestine Liberation Organization under Presidents George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, he became even less likely to interpret an adversary’s cheating as bad faith.
And so it now goes with the floundering U.S. peace agreement with the Taliban. In the 11 weeks since Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban representatives signed the agreement in the presence of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, violence has increased to such an extent that neither the U.S. Embassy in Kabul nor Resolute Support (as the NATO mission is now named) will provide statistics openly. Diplomats never circle the wagon when the news is good.
It is against such a backdrop that Khalilzad’s exculpation of Taliban involvement in attacks earlier this week on a funeral procession in Nangarhar and a maternity ward in Kabul must be taken with a grain of salt. Afghan authorities say they have developed compelling, multistream evidence of Taliban responsibility for the funeral bombing, and they are also exploring some leads pointing to Taliban involvement in the maternity ward attack. That Khalilzad withholds ordinary statistics and information about post-agreement violence and then urges all officials to take his word for it before investigations are complete should raise red flags about Khalilzad’s motivations in ascribing guilt in the most recent attacks.
The problem goes beyond the possibility that one envoy is acting dishonestly in order to keep the agreement he signed on life support. Rather, if the Taliban are capable of infiltrating Kabul to stage a major attack and the U.S. is seeking to cover it up rather than help its Afghan allies plug the security gap, then the Taliban are likely to attack Kabul again. Remember: When the Taliban first attacked Kabul in 1996, it was against the backdrop of their promises to engage in intra-Afghan negotiations. Today, the same pattern appears to be repeating. Certainly, it never hurts to talk to enemies, but if one side seeks peace and the other looks at diplomacy as an asymmetric warfare strategy, talks will not succeed. Calibrating national security to wishful thinking rather than reality is always unwise.
Khalilzad’s apparent whitewashing of the Taliban is one dangerous precedent. Another is an attempt to bully allies into negotiating with terrorists. So it was when Khalilzad visited New Delhi in the days before the terrorist attacks. In an interview with The Hindu newspaper, Khalilzad urged India to engage directly with the Taliban. “India is an important force in Afghanistan, and it would be appropriate for that [Taliban] engagement to take place,” he said.
Actually, it would be wildly inappropriate. On Dec. 24, 1999, terrorists hijacked an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi and diverted it to Kandahar, where the Taliban sheltered the hijackers, allowed them to hold the plane for a week, and ultimately helped them escape even though they had killed a passenger. The Taliban also operated training camps for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, a group that has conducted terrorist attacks inside India. While Khalilzad, desperate to have a diplomatic success (he has previously negotiated Iranian noninterference in Iraq), insists the Taliban have changed, the fact that a joint U.S.-Afghan raid less than a year ago killed Asim Umar, leader of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, in Taliban-controlled territory, belies this. After all, groups that have foresworn terrorism tend not to operate jointly with al Qaeda officials plotting terror in India.
(Adding to the irony of Khalilzad’s suggestion that Indian officials negotiate with a terror group is the fact that he has blacklisted Hamdullah Mohib, the national security adviser to Afghanistan’s elected president, because Mohib criticized Khalilzad’s imperious approach and questioned his trusting approach toward the Taliban, with whom he previously did business. So much for consistency.)
The problem for Washington is the precedent Khalilzad demands (that the world’s largest democracy negotiate with a group that believes Hindus and other non-Sunni Muslims deserve death) could undercut broader U.S. counterterrorism policies. Not only India, but also European allies (who have always had a more mercantilist approach toward diplomacy) can use the Khalilzad example to demand that the U.S. negotiate with Hezbollah rather than seek to blacklist it. After all, Hezbollah is as much a reality in Lebanon as the Taliban are in Afghanistan. That both are proxy groups of foreign states wielding them in unconventional warfare campaigns just adds to the parallel.
If Khalilzad recommends India negotiate with the Taliban, what is to stop Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from demanding the U.S. to negotiate with al Qaeda, the Islamic State, or Hamas (three terror groups with which Turkey has had relations) on the grounds that they are regional realities?
Precedent matters in diplomacy, and so, the State Department should tread carefully. For Khalilzad to want the peace agreement to succeed more than does the Taliban is to condemn the agreement to failure. Khalilzad’s increasing desperation (ignoring and excusing terrorism and demanding other countries do likewise) will never bring peace; rather, it will simply condemn the region to greater bloodshed.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
