Time for jaw-jaw

Rhoda Klapp

How about quit this afternoon, no need to wait until tomorrow, no need to have extended negotiations with people who (no matter who, locally) cannot deliver on any promise even if they sincerely intend to.

What part of the history of western interdiction in Afghanistan made them think they could succeed, this time. Let us be sure of one thing, that those who supported this adventure should never again be making policy where British lives and money are at risk.

Jez

"In fact, the Taliban are primarily concerned about the future of Afghanistan and not – contrary to what some may think -- a broader global Islamic jihad. Their links with Al-Qaeda – which is not, in any case, in Afghanistan any more -- are weak. We need to at least try to seriously explore the possibility of a political settlement in which the Taliban are part of the Afghan political system."

It seems a concise and intelligent peice.

It also seems too simplistic concluding the inevitability of their predictions regarding the Taliban- although not as simplistic as the original post invasion plans of Iraq & Afghanistan by the UK/US

It'll most probably will be shredded after a polite reply is sent to the author's of this letter.

Pakistan is the new horror story unfolding now maybe.

justathought

"First, that the cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone. This is unsustainable in the long run."

Actually it has cost the US over one trillion. The cost for the US is sustainable so long as they can borrow to cover the cost but as Obama was reported it is unaffordable.

As reported by the LA Times in September Obama said

"Our nation's strength and influence abroad must be firmly anchored in our prosperity at home," he said. "Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people and contributed to record deficits."

"We can't simply afford to ignore the price of these wars,"

He may well have a point?

strapworld

And, as these people talk endlessly. Lives are being lost, for what?

2trueblue

So, no change then?
We should have bought their crop every year and thereby deprived the Taliban of some of their power.

yank

blah blah blah... that whole gang of letter signers was likely part of Obama's amen chorus 2 years ago.

And he was even then bleating about the "real war" to be fought in Afghanistan, and has followed up his rhetoric by tripling our troop counts there since he got in.

All this is so important and visionary and worthwhile to you all, that you're today complaining about that which you were shortly ago supporting.

Yes, your letter will be shredded. Why bother listening to the incoherent? This narcissist got what he wanted out of you, why would he care about you today?

Just sod off, the lot of you globalist troughers. The only concern you have for the US Treasury is how far you can tap into it.

Tarka the Rotter

And so, after spending mountains of money to send troops into Afghanistan, fighting against a foe that could never be defeated, we come round to jaw jaw. Well, strikes me that jaw jaw should have been the starting point, not a mad scramble towards guns, bombs and military options of even more dubious kinds (if such a thing is possible). What a waste of lives, time and money. Yet I agree, jaw jaw was inevitable.

MaxSceptic

Simple - if un-PC way - to win:

a) shoot any Afghan male not clean-shaven and who refuses eat a bacon butty.

b) ban the veil (and burka) and allow/encourage the women to shot as many of their male relatives that they can.

All other methods are wishful thinking and fated to failure with the result that Afghanistan of 2020 will be just as backward as Afghanistan of 1920, 1820, etc. etc.

Jon Boone

A couple of points:

You say: “First, that the cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone. This is unsustainable in the long run.”

The current strategy actually recognises it is unsustainable in the long run, which is why the current rate of spending is only going to last another four years until the transition to Afghan security control has taken place. Thereafter costs will probably fall to about a tenth of what they are at present. NATO says the Afghan army and police will cost $6bn a year to sustain. You would probably have to double that figure to pay for the remaining US special forces mission, aid and development. Still a huge number, but not unsustainable in the long run.

You say: the situation on the ground is getting worse, the Taliban have the momentum and they are now a “national movement”.

There is no doubt things have deteriorated terribly. And I think on balance the surge of foreigners has probably made the situation worse. But the Taliban are still a very long way from being able to topple the government or seize national power through their insurgency. There is virtually zero Taliban sympathy in the cities (including Kandahar, more or less) which make up around 25% of the population. Add to that the vast majority of the north and west, minus the Pashtun pockets. Even in the rural south, where clearly their influence and ability to carry out acts of violence is now widespread, there is no great groundswell of public support for putting Mullah Omar in power. Instead, the growth of the insurgency is caused by an interplay of lots of very badly understood motivations, disputes and straight forward intimidation. And, of course, that swirl of motivations varies from village to village. (It's telling that although Afghans in rural areas famously go to the Taliban for quick, clean justice, they will also go to the government and NATO for services that the insurgents cannot offer - opportunistic behaviour that does not suggest a particularly strong ideological commitment to the Taliban). Opinion poll data are deeply suspect and not worth quoting, but their broad conclusions are correct: the Taliban does not enjoy widespread popularity and probably only represents a very small minority of Afghans. As you note Pakistan is still a problem. I think nearly all the Taliban's capacity to do harm is ultimately due to the proxy war the ISI is waging in Afghanistan.

You say: The 2001 settlement needs to be changed.

Who could not agree? But how will one ever persuade Karzai, who we continue to pretend is a democratically elected leader, to decentralise power in Afghanistan? Like everything else foreigners come up with that he doesn’t like, he will reject it. Either way, are the Taliban really fighting for constitutional change? I think not. More importantly, how does one bring in those excluded Taliban who lost out in 2001 without enraging those constituencies who did well out of it? The risk of some grand peace deal winning the south only to lose the north (or dampen Pakistani meddling, only for Indian malign interference to increase) is very great, particularly if you are trying to secure such a deal in the very short term, as the letter writers seem to want.

You say: the Taliban’s leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate.

I’m afraid this has entirely passed me by. When was this willingness indicated? If you mean people like Mullah Zaeef have said they are keen, then I fear that is a long way from “the Taliban’s leadership”. As far as I can see the leadership continues to give every indication that they are not interested in talking, both in their public statements and also over the humiliating Mullah Mansour impostor fiasco. Incidentally, the fact that McChrystal gave the green light for Mansour to come to Kabul and meet top Afghan and NATO officials and that Petraeus then bragged that such meetings had been going ahead (before later claiming he was always sceptical of the whole thing) is surely a sign that the Americans are already quite open to dialogue with the armed opposition. Reassuringly, they seem to want to do this through back channels and secret meetings – as they should be. I don’t think President Obama needs a bunch of academics to point out to him the desirability of talks.

You say: waiting for a victor’s negotiation is not realistic.

I agree. What is realistic, however, is not victory but a post-transition period of true stalemate where both sides will have to accept they cannot win. As long as the US and its allies remain committed to paying the large costs of the Afghan government and security forces that will be left behind when NATO combat troops pull out in 2014 then the regime will be able to survive indefinitely (unlike President Najibullah who, facing an infinitely more powerful and legitimate insurgency, fell from power when the Soviet Union collapsed and the foreign subsidies dried up). According to people who study peace building, stalemate is a good thing for creating the conditions for talks. At the moment we don't have stalemate, we have a situation where the Taliban believe they have the momentum and just need to wait until the foreigners leave. Such a stalemate will be messy, will not stop a lot of people being killed and it will take a really, really long time. But why should we expect any different given our experience in Northern Ireland where it took decades to get to the Good Friday Agreement?

You say: the Taliban aren’t that keen on Al Qaeda and are just good Afghan nationalists.

I don’t know the answer to this, but I think it is highly debatable. Mullah Omar has had almost a decade to cut his ties with bin Laden, but has chosen not to. Indeed, he was happy for his entire regime to go down in flames rather than hand him over. We know from David Rohde’s account of his kidnapping that the Haqqani Network is barely distinguishable in its outlook from the most swivel-eyed international jihadists. Al Qaeda the organisation might be weak, but the ideology has metastasized, spreading over the last ten years, particularly in FATA.

I can understand why a lot of people want to think well of the Taliban, particularly when our only interlocutors with them are ex-leaders of the old regime like Zaeef and Muttawakil, who were always more urban and moderate in their outlooks than Omar and his hillbilly fundamentalists. But for President Obama, or anyone else who occupies that office in the coming years, it’s a hell of a gamble.

Dimoto

Karzai has zero chance of being an acceptable "unifier" of Afghanistan.
His USP is being (just barely) acceptable to Washington.

They should have restored the line of Zahir Shah, and reduced the politicians to their normal Afghan function - venal, (short-term) time servers who are regularly replaced/rotated.
Washington just degraded and wasted the prestige of Zahir Shah.
That's what biggoted, doctrinaire republicans do.
More fool them.

Bill Corr

So the dumb Americans let themselves get suckered into yet another meaningless war to support a corrupt elite?

Yawn.

The spineless British politicians who were as eager as puppies to do whatever Bush the Younger wanted and consequently dragged the U.K. in the Afghan quagmire are those WE ought to blame.