Exum in Foreign Policy
Andrew Exum on negotiation in AfPakland in Foreign Policy:
….But Afghans are perfectly comfortable talking while still fighting. So too, at least in practice, are the United States and its allies: In insurgencies from Vietnam to Northern Ireland, we have negotiated with insurgents while combat operations were ongoing. In the American public’s mind, however, wars take place sequentially: First, you fight;
second, you negotiate a settlement. The word “negotiations” conjures up hopes for an end to the conflict in the minds of Americans and other Westerners — when all that really might be occurring is another round of jockeying for position between Afghanistan’s warring political forces.
….All that, to make matters worse, assumes the insurgent groups are independent actors. The reality, though, is that negotiations between the insurgent groups and the government in Kabul will only go so far as the Pakistani security services allow. Some Western analysts took heart in Pakistan’s decision in February to arrest Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. At the time, however, the arrest of Mullah Baradar, who was in negotiations with the government in Kabul, was interpreted by the Taliban rank and file to be a stark warning to those who would negotiate without the permission of the Pakistani government, under whose patronage and protection the Taliban has operated east of the Durand Line since 2005. Today it is widely accepted that this was indeed the case and that Pakistan deliberately thwarted negotiations between the Quetta Shura Taliban and the government in Kabul to serve its own parochial interests. Since that event, there is no sign that Pakistan’s powerful military has taken a softer line on negotiations between the Taliban and the government in Kabul.
Exum wrote a good op-ed. Go read it.
That said, the above paragraph makes me want to ask Andrew why the United States is not negotiating directly with Pakistan/ISI instead of wasting valuable time kabuki-ing around with plausibly deniable and expendable members of proxy groups over which Pakistan holds a demonstrated veto?
What is particularly curious in this situation is that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in his memoir From the Shadows, made laudatory remarks about George Schultz (with whom Gates bumped heads) as “the toughest secretary of State I knew” who was willing to negotiate with the Soviets in one part of the world while bleeding them in another ( paraphrasing here). A lesson from history that bears revisiting.
Pakistan is our real adversary in Afghanistan and the party with the power to actually make agreements that stick. Negotiations 101: bargaining should not take place with powerless intermediaries.
October 24th, 2010 at 4:01 am
There were direct negotiations with the Pakistani’s last month. 1) The U.S. sent a raid across the border 2) The U.S. shot two Pakistani border guards (whose relationship to various Taliban groups was probably cozy) 3) The Pakistani’s cut one of the two logistical routes into Afghanistan from the port in Karachi 4) The trucks sat there for nine days and a few were burned with Pakistani connivance 5) The U.S. apologized and ponied up 2 billion dollars in <s>tribute</s> military aid 6) The Pakistani foreign minister got the red carpet treatment and the Secretary of State laughed at his jokes as if he was Martin van Creveld being tickled to death by squirrels 7) the camera panned ominously to General Kinyani sitting in the audience, capturing him in profile in a manner suspiciously close to the way the camera captured Chancellor Palpatine in profile towards the end of The Phantom Menace. I sometimes wish the U.S. was as conniving as the Arab street believes it is. Being played like a Fender by a second-rate power because it keeps threatening to blow its head off in between manic-depressive spells is embarrassing.
October 24th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Joseph, well said!