Despite a faltering start, the opening of a Taliban
office in Doha raised hopes of installing a full-fledged Afghan peace process.
Although last week’s move ran into early difficulties, it nonetheless marked a
significant milestone in diplomatic efforts aimed at a negotiated settlement of
the twelve-year-old war.
If proof was needed of the complications of
peacemaking, it came within hours of what was meant to be a carefully
choreographed inauguration of the Taliban’s political office. No sooner had
President Obama described this as an “important first step” towards
reconciliation at a G-8 summit than Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced a
boycott of the Qatar process. Karzai also suspended talks on a security deal
aimed at a post-2014 US military presence in Afghanistan.
Karzai’s fury over a development that was long in
the making mimicked his mercurial stance of the past two years – since efforts
to establish a negotiating channel in Qatar got underway, initially through
backchannel contacts between American and Taliban representatives. This time,
however, Karzai’s anger was prompted by the Taliban’s use of the ‘Islamic
Emirates’ sign and flag at the office where they made the announcement. Kabul
accused Qatar and the US of violating understandings that the office would only
be a venue for peace talks and not have the appearance of a rival Afghan
embassy.
Instead of seeking to quietly resolve the issue, the
Karzai administration went public in a display of rage and retributive actions.
The banner became the source of immediate contention. But Karzai’s fundamental problem
was in joining a process that, if successful, would make him politically
irrelevant.
Within a day the plaque was removed and the flag
lowered. Washington acted quickly through the Qataris and also moved to placate
Kabul to prevent the process from unravelling. Though Karzai may have been more
damaged by the diplomatic fracas than the peace process several consequences
followed and the process stalled. An American statement in support of the
office was put on hold, to wait until the cooling of tempers and announcements
from Kabul. The start of formal US-Taliban talks was delayed.
This shaky beginning did not, however, obscure the
significance of the Doha development or minimise the intense diplomatic effort
that went into it, in which Pakistan played a vital behind-the-scenes role. The
opening of the Doha office represented the first concrete sign of a willingness
to negotiate on the part of the two parties to the Afghan conflict: the US and
the Taliban. It was the strongest signal yet of their interest in seeking a
political end to the war. It also marked international recognition of the
Taliban as a legitimate negotiating partner.
In return Taliban representatives read out a
statement at the office opening. This contained two key messages that Washington
long called for and which were requirements for the office to open. The first
was the undertaking that Afghanistan’s soil would not be used to ‘harm’ and
threaten other countries; the second was the Taliban’s willingness to “meet
(other) Afghans”.
Both sides stepped back from their previous
positions to reach agreement on the office. The Taliban statement, which
resembled past pronouncements, did not quite contain the language US officials
may have wanted to affirm the Taliban’s public ‘break with Al-Qaeda’. But it
was accepted by Washington as “the first step in distancing them...from
international terrorism”.
The most significant policy shift in the pre-history
of this development actually occurred in 2011 when the US turned its previous
three pre-conditions for talks into negotiating outcomes: that the Taliban
‘break with Al-Qaeda’, renounce violence and accept the Afghan constitution. US
secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced this in a February 2011 speech,
which for the first time also explicitly endorsed direct talks with the
Taliban. This followed President Obama’s June 2010 speech that acknowledged
there was no military solution in Afghanistan.
The Taliban too showed flexibility to secure the
political office. In March 2012 the Taliban abandoned preliminary talks with US
interlocutors accusing them of going back on promises to release five Taliban
prisoners from Guantanamo that they claimed was previously agreed to. The
exchange of these detainees for the only American prisoner of war in Taliban
custody was supposed to be part of a package of confidence-building measures
that was to include a Taliban statement disassociating from Al-Qaeda. The talks
broke down over how these steps should be sequenced, with the Taliban insisting
on the prisoner swap first. The deadlock contributed to the 18-month hiatus in
direct US-Taliban contacts.
In issuing their statement at Doha, the Taliban
accepted a sequence on which their leaders had earlier demurred. This
turnaround was helped in no small measure by Pakistan’s efforts with the
Taliban. These efforts intensified following the April 24 meeting in Brussels
between US Secretary of State John Kerry and army chief General Ashfaq Parvez
Kayani.
The Taliban were persuaded to accept a sequence in
which they would first issue the statement rather than insist on the prisoner
release as a pre-requisite. The statement would also convey Taliban willingness
to enter an intra-Afghan dialogue. This was expected to include members of
Kabul’s High Peace Council, once this body was broadened. The Taliban’s
ambiguously-worded statement made no reference to the HPC but it was
anticipated that such talks would follow sometime after the opening round of
US-Taliban negotiations, where the prisoner exchange would top the agenda.
It took over two years of intense diplomatic efforts
to get to this point. There were several missed opportunities along the way.
For example in December 2011, agreement seemed to be at hand for stakeholders
to consider announcing the Doha office at the Bonn conference. But Karzai’s
fierce opposition torpedoed this. The impossible conditions he set also became
stumbling blocks subsequently. For example he insisted on an MoU from Qatar
specifying terms for the office as determined by him. Neither the Qataris nor
the Americans obliged. President Obama prevailed on Karzai to drop this demand
during his January 2013 Washington visit, only to find him later wriggle out of
this. This prompted frenetic White House efforts to walk Karzai back to his
commitment.
Another reason for the diplomatic impasse of the
past two years was the Obama administration’s vacillation on the prisoner
exchange out of fear of a congressional backlash. Had the prisoner swap
happened earlier the peace process would have been set in motion before and
negotiations would have been further ahead. Once the Taliban suspended talks
last year their leaders too came under pressure from the rank-and-file to ‘wait
it out’ and not make concessions.
The Qatar process was revived only after Obama’s re-election,
changes in his national security team and Pakistan’s vigorous intercession with
Washington in early 2013 to give the Doha track a decisive push. What injected
urgency into the effort was the looming deadline of 2014 when Nato combat
troops depart Afghanistan.
The Doha office is of course just the beginning of a
difficult journey fraught with many obstacles. The immediate challenge is to
revive the agreement presumed to have been reached earlier between all sides
about the rules for the Taliban office and the sequence of meetings to formally
launch the peace process. This means bringing Karzai back on board to ensure he
doesn’t derail the process. It also requires getting the Taliban to agree to
talks with HPC representatives, initially perhaps in their individual capacity.
Would US warnings that the Doha office will be shut
down if the Taliban do not agree be sufficient ‘incentive’ to get talks
started? How and when will the detainees’ exchange proceed? That this has to be
tackled while fighting continues in Afghanistan will also expose the fragile
process to turbulence.
Then there are questions beyond the immediate. What
kind of political accommodation is possible among parties with little or no
trust between them? How will differences over the Afghan constitution be
reconciled? There are more questions than answers, but then everyone accepts
that forging peace will be harder than waging war.
http://e.thenews.com.pk/7-23-2013/page7.asp#;
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