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.