U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has one of the toughest tasks in the diplomatic world: facilitating the Afghan government and the Taliban across the peace process finish line.
His duties are equivalent to a therapist trying to reconcile two family members who live under the same roof but nonetheless hold a decadeslong grudge between them. The one difference, of course, is that Kabul and the Taliban are actually waging war with each other, with dozens of civilians dying every week.
After a three-week hiatus, Afghan government and Taliban negotiators are resuming their talks this week. The discussions are occurring at a particularly shaky time for Afghanistan, with unclaimed assassinations, bombings, and shootings sweeping through the country’s cities and U.S. aircraft continuing to bomb Taliban formations in defense of the beleaguered Afghan security forces.
Over 3,300 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed in the last year, and there is no evidence the Taliban is willing to tamp down the violence just because the group is now talking with the Afghan government. Kabul’s delegation is getting increasingly impatient with the violence, and the Taliban continues to doubt Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s sincerity in negotiating a new political framework.
Khalilzad, a veteran troubleshooter with deep experience in Afghanistan and somebody who knows all of the players like the back of his hand, has been busy shuttling between Kabul, Doha, and Islamabad for well over a year, hoping to do what many describe as an impossible task in solving Afghanistan’s two-decade civil war.
While he managed to negotiate a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban last February on behalf of the United States, the broader intra-Afghanistan talks have been fumbling and stumbling from the get-go. This has less to do with Khalilzad’s talent as a negotiator than it does with the extreme difficulties inherent in ending a civil war, particularly Afghanistan’s civil war, in which the parties have been nursing their grievances for 20 years.
Peace talks were supposed to begin in March 2020, 10 days after the U.S. and the Taliban signed the Doha agreement. Instead, they were repeatedly delayed as Kabul and the Taliban haggled over the one issue, prisoner releases, that was supposed to serve as a confidence-building measure. The talks began seven months late and, when they did start, the delegations were fighting over rules, procedures, and modalities for three months before breaking for intermission.
The next several weeks are likely to be even tougher, as the delegations spar over what subjects to cover and when to cover them. Only after all of this is sorted out will the actual meat course of the negotiations begin. The platter includes an assortment of controversial issues, including a nationwide ceasefire, implementation of that ceasefire, whether an interim government will replace the existing one, how to disarm and demobilize Taliban foot soldiers and pro-government militias, the protection of the rights of women and minorities, and how to reconcile the Taliban’s version of Islam with the government’s.
Along the way, spoilers will seek to derail the negotiations entirely. As Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center told the Associated Press on Tuesday, “We’re not talking about one bad apple; we’re talking about a whole orchard of bad apples with incentives to stonewall at best and sabotage at worst.”
For the U.S., this all sounds bleak. We share a common sense of disgust when innocent civilians are dying. We find it repugnant when leaders put their own self-interest above the nation’s. In Afghanistan, wanton violence and selfishness are ingrained in the conflict. To the extent we can help those who are attempting to bring the war to a resolution, Washington can provide diplomatic support as Khalilzad has been doing doggedly since the latter half of 2018.
However, U.S. policymakers, whether in the waning days of the Trump administration or in the first few months of the Biden administration, can’t delude themselves into thinking a resolution of Afghanistan’s civil war is on their shoulders. Indeed, for Washington to fall into the trap of carrying such heavy responsibility on its shoulders is to open up the floodgates to a cornucopia of bad ideas that are already being floated, such as tying a U.S. military withdrawal to a 180-day Taliban ceasefire or waiting it out until the talks succeed in striking a comprehensive, conflict-ending peace agreement. The first would base a U.S. troop withdrawal on the Taliban’s good graces, and the latter would all but nip it in the bud.
As vice president, Joe Biden was the one senior national security principal in the Obama administration who was willing to push back against the Defense Department’s counterinsurgency recommendations. President Barack Obama, of course, eventually sided with U.S military commanders after a monthslong policy review, deploying an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to the country. Obama, never fully convinced counterinsurgency would actually work, would come to regret the decision.
Now that he has ascended to the highest office in the land, President-elect Biden needs to face up to a question the public has been asking for years: Why on Earth are we still pretending the U.S. can pacify Afghanistan?
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
