Editor's Note: For all who have been calling for a U.S.-NATO troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Shahid R. Siddiqi's analysis of the complexities involved with, and conditions necessary for that withdrawal, is important to read, study and understand.

- Les Blough, Editor

While addressing the Peace Jirga, or the grand council for peace, held recently in Kabul and attended by pro-Karzai Afghan politicians and elders, President Karzai’s message to the insurgents was: “Make peace with me and there will be no need for foreigners here. As long as you are not talking to us, not making peace with us, we will not let the foreigners leave.” The insurgents responded by launching a rocket attack and a suicide bomber on the assembly site, dubbing the attendees as cronies of the West and vowed to keep fighting with the foreign occupiers.

The Afghan government says the assembly was of "consultative” nature, an effort to build national consensus on how to pursue peace talks by addressing some of the most basic questions related to the much sought after peace in Afghanistan. From this platform Karzai rolled out his program to lure the Taliban off the battlefield.

In the end, a carefully choreographed gathering of 1,600 delegates endorsed Karzai's push for peace talks with the Taliban insurgents to end nearly nine years of war, citing the inability of NATO and Afghan forces to bring peace. To push the process forward, the assembly called on Karzai to form a special committee and ask world leaders to endorse the peace proposals next month when they come to Kabul for an international conference.

This gave Karzai the mandate he was looking for and some boost in the eyes of his UN and Western sponsors who still remain skeptical about his chances of success. They nevertheless lined up to support the Jirga, calling it part of the political process, hoping that in tandem with upcoming military operations it will help bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

Different strategies between the U.S. and Karzai

President Obama called the Jirga “an important milestone that America supports”. This reflected a position that the US has now come to take publicly, but of which it is shy in practice. The Americans and Karzai are on the same page on the need for peace in Afghanistan but differ in approach. The Americans want to talk to mainstream Taliban only from a position of strength, which they hope to attain by deploying more troops in the battlefield, simultaneously inducing the Taliban foot soldiers to lay down arms and reintegrate in the Afghan society in the hope of weakening the insurgency.

Karzai, on the other hand, unsure of the success of the American strategy and military victory, insists on opening a dialogue with what the Americans call, the ‘unrepentant’ Taliban to promote reconciliation and end the war. This creates a dichotomy between the positions the two of them take which, unless resolved, will erode all chances of reconciliation in the near future.

The Peace Jirga was unrepresentative

The Peace Jirga did not draw wide support because it was unrepresentative. It would have carried much greater weight had tribal elders and representatives from a cross section of the population, even if they held dissenting views, been present also. Abdullah Abdullah of the National Front, Karzai’s main rival candidate in last year's presidential election, declined to attend calling it “a little more than a rubber stamp”. Even those who attended the Jirga were deeply divided over its outcome. "This Jirga will only benefit the president," said Hani Shah, a member of parliament from Khost province. On one of their websites the Taliban called the Jirga a “waste of time”.

Critics insist Karzai engineered the composition of the Jirga to ensure minimal opposition to his plan by shutting out key opposition figures and the Taliban, who are the main drivers of insurgency. Whether the limited show of support for Karzai by the West and few handpicked Afghan groups help resolve the Afghan imbroglio remained a question mark. As for Karzai, the Jirga provided him some sort of legitimacy after an election that was labeled as fraudulent and helped in casting him as a leader who stood for peace and reconciliation outside the American frame of action.

The Taliban's precondition and the role of Pakistan

The Taliban refuse to talk peace unless the foreign forces leave Afghanistan, a precondition they always have insisted on, even during back channel negotiations. They have so far refused to deal with Karzai because of credibility issues. They are not in a hurry either. They know the time is on their side, they are fighting and dying for a just cause, their ranks continue to swell, they get battle hardened every day, they are fighting on their own turf and terms, they control bulk of the southern and eastern parts of the country where they are even winning over the Afghan people by providing good governance and the Americans, weary of this long irregular warfare, are getting drained of resources and patience. They are, therefore, willing to wait out their adversary, believing their victory to be a matter of time.

A reality check in this backdrop seems to have convinced Karzai that the Americans will pull out of Afghanistan sooner rather than later, leaving his country in a mess. “Karzai told me that he can’t trust the Americans to fix the situation here,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul who did not want to be named. Karzai is also conscious that Taliban will remain the main players in the country’s post American political dispensation and the only viable option for him is to make peace with these fellow Pashtuns and all stake holders. Karzai has also come to realize that cordial relations with Pakistan, against whom he has been leading a tirade of allegations until recently, will not only be inevitable but in Afghanistan’s best interests because the two countries share a long, sensitive and restive border, with Pashtun tribes straddling both sides. Pakistan is in a position to play an important role in bringing about this reconciliation, an opportunity that the Karzai government should not fritter away.

Karzai reaching out to the Taliban

In an effort to negotiate an armistice with the Taliban, his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, secretly met Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar – the Taliban second-in-command, before his arrest in Karachi, according to a senior Afghan official. Karzai’s men are also talking with Gulbadin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hizb-e-Islami and a Taliban ally, who led his faction in 1980s war against the Soviet forces in collaboration with Pakistan. Hekmatyar is more of a power seeker than an ideologue. His group, which is focused in northeastern Afghanistan, lacks teeth on the battlefield, doesn’t contribute much to the insurgency and has little influence on the more powerful insurgent factions, the Taliban and the Haqqani network.

In his efforts to seek peace with Taliban, Karzai is supported by most of his fellow Pashtuns leaders who insist that talks with the Taliban leadership, and with Pakistan, whom Taliban respect in spite of Pakistan’s collaboration with the Americans, are critical. Karzai cannot afford to ignore their advice for he might lose their support, as most fighting is taking place in Pashtun areas.

The Americans, a fly in the ointment

But Karzai’s association with the Americans and the Northern Alliance stands in the way. His rocky relations with the Americans in recent months, including his threat to join the Taliban, could very well have been triggered by his desire to sound conciliatory towards the insurgents and make a common cause with them. That his attitude towards them, including Jalaluddin Haqqani group whose fighters were blamed for the attack on the Jirga, is softening can be discerned from reports that he even tried to deflect these allegations during meetings with his security officials, suggesting that the Americans might have been behind these attacks.

Karzai Positions Himself to Open Dialogue With Taliban

Karzai’s dismissal of two very influential members of his administration – Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and National Security Chief Amrullah Saleh, on the grounds of security lapse leading to attack on the peace Jirga, are being interpreted as a move towards reducing the influence of Northern Alliance in his administration and creating an environment conducive for peace talks with Taliban and Pakistan by appointing his confidants instead.

Both of these officials were very close to the US administration and NATO officials in Afghanistan and their departure might become an additional irritant in the already rocky relationship between Karzai and Washington. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said both officials were "people we admire and whose service we appreciate." A NATO official close to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the NATO commander in Afghanistan said, “We had a very good working relationship with both, a relationship developed over a long time.”

About Atmar, who held three important cabinet posts, a US military official said that he and Karzai had clashed in recent months over Karzai's reconciliation efforts and key police appointments. "Atmar really disagreed with the reintegration of the Taliban into the police and the army," the official said. "He had some problems with it, and, frankly, we agreed with him."

Saleh, Afghan intelligence chief since 2004, had a cozy relationship with the CIA since the civil war in the 1990s. His departure is likely to be viewed as a setback within CIA. A former U.S. intelligence official disclosed Saleh’s disagreement with Karzai over release from detention of Taliban sympathizers who could not be prosecuted for want of evidence, to demonstrate his willingness to negotiate with the insurgents.

An ethnic Tajik, Saleh is the former aide to the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, the commander of Northern Alliance who fought the Soviet Union and the Taliban. Saleh did not support the peace Jirga, calling it “a victory for the Taliban” and favored a hard-line approach to negotiations with the Taliban and Pakistan.

Saleh was a staunch critic of Pakistan and went overboard in blaming it for supporting the Taliban, a line used by the Northern Alliance, which has close ties to India. As Karzai now positions himself to reach out to the Taliban, he will have to turn to Pakistan for help because the Taliban have strong bonds with Pashtun tribes in Pakistan’s border region. With Saleh calling the shots, Pakistan would have found it difficult to respond positively.

Karzai may have seen Saleh as an obstacle in his efforts to talk to Taliban. "Intel has a very important role in reconciliation," said Khalid Pashtun, a lawmaker. "Saleh was not the right person for this job. No Taliban would ever trust this man".

Recent developments indicate that the Americans are as yet struggling to put in place a workable strategy to fix Afghanistan’s problems. Canada and Netherlands will begin withdrawing troops this summer and given the British government’s financial crunch it may not be far behind. Clearly, the Americans do not have the stomach for an indefinite involvement and might choose to quit in haste one more time, leaving the country in a flux. This would prove not only disastrous for Afghanistan but also create a grave security threat for the region – something not in the American interest either.

Conclusion

For Karzai it would be important to get the participants of the upcoming international conference to endorse his peace plan. The conference must find solutions that will enable peace and security to return to this wretched country. If Karzai can persuade Taliban to settle for peace in exchange for American withdrawal, the proposal should merit serious consideration. After all, that country belongs to the Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and others and it is they who must find a way of coexisting with each other, like they have done for centuries in the past. No one, not even America, can show them how to live together.

At this critical juncture, an enabling environment needs to be created and the international community owes it to the Afghan people to make this happen. On his part, Karzai will have to tread carefully, approach the issues objectively and stop playing in the hands of his handlers.

Read his bio and more analyses and essays by
Axis of Logic Columnist, Shahid R. Siddiqi