Negotiate with the Taliban!? Part Deux

The excellent column in Foreign Policy This week at war talks about this week the capture--or possible defection--of a prominent Taliban leader. It goes on discuss how this guy might be able to broker a truce with certain elements of the Taliban. It's possible this guy might be able to peel away certain elements of the Taliban but not in the way the article discusses. It makes the mistake--although to a lesser extent--that the press has been making when discussing negotiations with the Taliban. It assumes that they have similar values to us and operate the same way.

We made a similar assumption in Vietnam. We figured we could pressure the North Vietnamese into giving up their support for the Viet Cong through bombing. We would apply a certain amount of pressure, they would do a cost benefit analysis, we would open negotiations through a back door channel, and then we would negotiate and end to the war. We failed to appreciate that that kind of calculus is not how they approach to the world. The might have the capacity to do it, but it's not the primary way in which they approach things. We learned the hard way they had an absolutistic way of looking at things that precluded giving up on their goals. It's difficult for someone who has grown up in out rational, achiever society to think like them.

With the Taliban, we're never going to be able to broker a legitimate deal with the leaders, because they think in the same absolutistic way. However, most of the insurgency are motivated more by situational factors. For them though, a rational cost benefit analysis won't determine who they side with but rather a spontaneous determination of who has the most respect and power at the moment. If the Taliban leader that defected has a lot of respect and face, he may be able to peel away certain elements based on that, but he won't be able to change the environment much by himself.

Negotiate with the Taliban?

I would disagree with Johnson that Afghanistan is sure to fail. The Afghan government has a lot of weaknesses but so does the Taliban. They are very fractured, have little ability for coherent action, but above all have very little appeal politically. They have failed to develop a good narrative. There claims to be fighting for Islam are undermined by there reliance on poppy as their most important cash source. The have some legitimacy fighting the foreign invader but we have done a good job of ensuring the Afghans government is everywhere we are.

That being said, our odds of success there are less than Iraq for the reasons you highlighted. Afghanistan is simply a very tough nut to crack. What Obama has done is hedged his bets. He has the right people in place, now we'll see if upping the resources available will accomplish anything.

I think the stories recently making a big deal about negotiating with Taliban miss the point and are dangerous. Getting members of the insurgency to defect or stop fighting rather than killing them has always been a part of any counter-insurgency strategy. Most of the Taliban, as with any insurgency, fight for situational reasons and it is possible to turn them. However, because they fight for situational reasons, you have to change those situational factors before you can accomplish anything. That means providing better security, effective political enfranchisement, economic development, and governance development. They won't switch sides if you simply talk to them.

Negotiating with the leaders of the Taliban, the hardcore minority, will accomplish nothing. Just ask the Pakistanis who have struck deal after the deal with the Taliban in Pakistan only to have fighting break out again and again. All they have accomplished is strengthening the grip of the hardcore minority over the rest of the insurgency. By sitting down and negotiating with them as equals, they have appeared weak and enhanced the prestige and respect due to the hardcore minority.

If It's In Time Magazine Then Truly Everyone Knows It

Time Magazine is not a very good publication (I would submit to you as evidence the picture at the beginning of the article I am about to link to which claims to show a US soldier "tak[ing] aim at a suspected Taliban hideout in the woods of Oshaky, Afghanistan" when he is clearly using his ACOG for the purpose of magnification, not target acquisition) so if they know that the US believes that a political settlement including the Taliban is the eventual outcome in Afghanistan, then pretty much all the cards are on the table. US leaders know we cannot be in Afghanistan for too much longer, the Taliban knows that we know it, and we know that the Taliban knows that we know. The point of all this knowing is that we cannot hope to achieve much of anything with the current surge.
The fact of the matter is that the Taliban can simply wait a year or two until we start to draw down before they go back on the offensive and they know it. And although I am very reluctant to draw historical analogies (especially ones that involve Vietnam as it has become cliche) I can't help but think that this surge is simply Obama's Christmas Bombing. So why waste time with a surge that the Taliban know they can wait out, that we know that the Taliban can wait out, and that the Taliban know that we know that they can wait out?
So what does this say about counterinsurgency more generally? That a foreign army cannot fake resolve. A legitimate and capable host nation partner is absolutely essential. Which brings us to the real problem for the US in Afghanistan. No Afghani institution(s) have the ability to resist the Taliban in the Pashtun parts of the country and this is a fundamental that will not change in a year or 18 months.