{"id":796,"date":"2010-09-25T10:19:28","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T10:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp3\/?p=796"},"modified":"2010-09-25T10:19:28","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T10:19:28","slug":"it-s-time-for-a-ceasefire-negotiations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2010\/09\/25\/796\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Time for a Ceasefire & Negotiations"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"0taliban\"One of the smartest people in Washington, when it comes to Afghanistan, is Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, an establishment thinktank. For a while now, Dorronsoro has been writing about the increasingly hopeless war, and he\u2019s proposed a plan for negotiating with the Taliban and other insurgents as a way out of the stalemate. Earlier this year, he wrote a paper for Carnegie called Afghanistan: Searching for Political Agreement. And on Thursday, Dorronsoro appeared at an event sponsored by Carnegie.Dorronsoro starts with a bleak but on-the-mark assessment of the counterinsurgency strategy pursued by the Obama administration. The U.S. counterinsurgency force in Helmand and Kandahar can\u2019t possibly succeed in less than five years, he said, if at all. Not only are things getting worse in the south, but conditions are deteriorating nearly everywhere in Afghanistan, including the northern provinces, where a \u201cnon-Pashtun Taliban\u201d is gaining strength. \u201cEverybody,\u201d he said, \u201cis anticipating the victory of the Taliban.\u201d As a result, locals in areas not traditionally associated with Taliban control are making deals with Taliban-style leaders.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The problem in Afghanistan isn\u2019t corruption, Dorronsoro says, but the sheer absence of central government in nearly all provinces, as governors and local potentates break away from Kabul. Not only are local politicians moving away from the government, but the insurgency is gaining momentum. \u201cIn more and more local districts, the Taliban are in charge,\u201d he said.
Dorronsoro believes that the Taliban will negotiate a ceasefire if they\u2019re promised a share of power in Kabul, and he believes that Pakistan \u2013 whose military intelligence service, the ISI, controls the Taliban leadership in its Pakistani hideouts \u2013 can force all, or nearly all, of the Taliban to the bargaining table. The result won\u2019t be pretty, he predicts, since a coalition government involving the Taliban would lead to a more sharia-oriented state and to political losses for Afghan minorities and women. But he argues that the Taliban won\u2019t want Al Qaeda to establish itself in Afghanistan again.
Unlike many analysts who argue that the Taliban is so diverse and fragmented that it can\u2019t be considered as a party to serious negotiation, Dorronsoro argues the opposite. He says that the Taliban is a highly organized, fairly well controlled organization that has installed unchallenged shadow governors in nearly all Afghan provinces and a logistical pipeline that crisscrosses the entire country. When the Taliban has power in certain areas, its leaders don\u2019t fight with each other. \u201cWhere is the proof that the Taliban is divided?\u201d he asked.
On the other hand, it is the Afghan government that may have trouble organizing itself as a negotiating partner, not the Taliban. \u201c[President] Karzai has no political support,\u201d he said. \u201cHe has no real power. Karzai doesn\u2019t represent much in Afghanistan. He\u2019s just a guy in Kabul.\u201d He has lost whatever support he had in the north, among supporters of the former Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban in the 1990s. As a result, Dorronsoro asked: \u201cPut the Taliban at the table. Who\u2019s on the other side?\u201d
Because Pakistan has so much leverage over the Taliban, for now at least, the Pakistani military and the ISI can bring the Taliban to the table. \u201cWe should he happy that somebody has leverage over the Taliban,\u201d he said. \u201cWe should put the Pakistani army in the loop, because they are the only ones who can deliver the Taliban.\u201d Dorronsoro said that the ISI exerts tight control over the Taliban, and he suggested that Mullah Omar, the one-eyed Taliban chieftain, might even be holed up on a Pakistani military base. But even if the Taliban\u2019s leaders are in Quetta or another Pakistan city, they\u2019re surrounded, watched, and controlled by ISI. If negotiations start, those Taliban who don\u2019t want to go along with what Pakistan wants can be turned over to the CIA in short order, meaning that nearly all of the Taliban will go along. On the other hand, Dorronsoro said, once the Taliban is back in Kabul, they\u2019ll separate themselves from Pakistan as quickly as possible, since there\u2019s no love lost between the Taliban leaders and the ISI.
Answering skeptics, there\u2019s no downside to negotiations now, Dorronsoro said. If they succeed, great. If only some of the Taliban accepts a deal, and some doesn\u2019t, that still should be considered progress. So, he concluded,\u00a0 \u201cLet\u2019s try a ceasefire and see if the Taliban is interested or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: The Nation<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the smartest people in Washington, when it comes to Afghanistan, is Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, an establishment thinktank. For a while now, Dorronsoro has been writing about the increasingly hopeless war, and he\u2019s proposed a plan for negotiating with the Taliban and other insurgents as a way out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c42-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Time for a Ceasefire & Negotiations - SunniOnline<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2010\/09\/25\/796\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It's Time for a Ceasefire & Negotiations - SunniOnline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the smartest people in Washington, when it comes to Afghanistan, is Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, an establishment thinktank. 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