A British newspaper has carried the sensational item that the Afghan government and the American administration have come to a virtual agreement on the terms on which the American will maintain a military presence in Afghanistan for training and mentoring Afghan forces after their combat role comes to an end. The news item in the “Telegraph” quotes the Afghan National Security Adviser Rangin Dafdar Spanta, as saying that the Afghan proposal is for an agreement lasting for 10 years after the cessation of NATO combat operations i.e. up to 2024. Spanta is to visit Washington in September to carry forward and perhaps finalise the agreement on which American officials have told the Telegraph that much of the fine print has been agreed. Apparently both sides expect that the agreement will be finalised before the Bonn Conference that is to be held in December.
Spanta did not mention the exact number of troops that the Americans would retain but said that thousands of troops would be needed to do the training of Afghan Security forces, that the Afghans would need air support from the Americans for their operations and that the Americans would not have independent bases but would be guests on Afghan bases. Previously the number that has bruited about as the American demand has been between 25 and 30,000 with the operational bases being Bagram, Shindad, Mazare Sharif, Jalalabad and Kandahar.
If this news is correct it will put a crimp in the plans that Ambassador Ryan Crocker announced earlier in the month. According to the Afghan TOLO news, Crocker said that in November there would be a conference in Turkey at which all Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours would make written commitments and pledges to work for peace and stability in Afghanistan and that at the Bonn Conference this pledge would be endorsed by the international community and send a powerful message to the Taliban. Will the neighbours of Afghanistan-particularly Iran- be prepared to endorse a decade long and clearly extendable US military presence on their border?
The reconciliation negotiations that were much talked about after the Germans mediated meetings between US officials and a Taliban representative, Tayab Agha- reportedly a confidante of Mullah Omar-appeared to have died a quiet death perhaps because the Taliban were offended by the disclosure of what were meant to be secret talks. Now a Pakistani newspaper, the Express Tribune, reports that the Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, who has in the past repeatedly denied any peace negotiations, has now said particularly with reference to Tayab Agha that he is very much with the Taliban but that he has never spoken to the Americans and that the Americans have been deceived as they had been earlier by the Quetta shopkeeper who posed as a Taliban leader.
The High Peace Council, set up by President Karzai with the mandate of reaching out to and negotiating an agreement with the Taliban, has been accused of meeting with everyone except the Taliban. One Council member has acknowledged that there have been no formal talks with the Taliban but maintained that there have been repeated overtures through intermediaries. Another Council member has said that there has bee no success in establishing contact because Mullah Rabbani the head of the High Peace Council does not want to talk to the unified leadership but wants to focus instead on talking to individuals who can be persuaded to break away. There are other reports which suggest that the High Peace Council’s provincial representatives have not yet been able to set up their offices leave alone make serious efforts at reconciliation. On another plane a Peace Council member, Musa Hotak, rather than acknowledging that the Tayab Agha connection had been severed because secrecy had not been maintained said that he had been told that on his return to Pakistan the Pakistan government had threatened him. The truth however is that the Peace Council had nothing to do with the US-Taliban talks and even Karzai himself was told about this contact only sometime after it had occurred.
It was, I believe, never President Karzai’s intention to leave the negotiation with the Taliban to the High Peace Council- a 70 member Council could not be a negotiating team. What he wanted however was a multi-ethnic group that would endorse reconciliation and pave the way for making the concessions to the Taliban that would be a necessary part of the peace making process. That this Council has had no success was evident from the fact that when the meeting of the “core group” comprising representatives of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the USA met in Islamabad earlier this month the Afghan representative Deputy Foreign Minister Jawad Ludin virtually pleaded with his Pakistani counterpart, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, to help in establishing contact with the Taliban.
In the meanwhile the UNSG’s special representative in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, had presented to diplomats in Kabul an analysis of statements that had appeared on a Taliban website. The UN analysis asserted that by saying, (a) "The Americans and all foreign invading forces should seek a face-saving exit from Afghanistan in understanding with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." and that the Taliban (b)"will abide by its commitments to the stability of the region following the withdrawal of foreign forces”, the Taliban had shown that their public position had undergone an evolution and that they were now willing to talk at least about foreign troop withdrawal.
In the fog that usually exists when such talks are to be held, the true position of the protagonists are usually not easily known. There is some evidence that the Taliban are now feeling somewhat exhausted by the decades of war. There are indications also that there are some differences developing between the leaders and the field commanders based in part on tribal loyalties being given priority over loyalty to Taliban leaders. On the other hand there is the perception that while the NATO forces have the watches the Taliban have the time. This was particularly true after the announcement that the NATO forces would withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014. They have undoubtedly suffered growing number of casualties in the 50,000 air sorties that the Americans say they have flown in the last year and in the 2800 special forces operations that 10,000 of these air sorties have supported. Many of their experienced mid level commanders have been captured or killed in these operations and the freedom of movement that they had enjoyed in Helmand, Kandahar and other southern provinces has been restricted.
On the other hand they have inflicted considerable losses on the NATO and Afghan force and have been successful in assassinating or otherwise eliminating Afghan officials. Particularly important in this context was the assassination of Ahmad Wali Karzai-perhaps not directly a Taliban operation and the killing of the Kandahar Mayor and earlier of the Kandahar Police chief. They can take pleasure in the International Crisis Group report which notes that $29 billion had been spent on the Afghan police and army, which "have thus far proved unable to enforce the law, counter the insurgency or even secure the seven regions" recently handed over to the Afghan security forces. They can claim quite rightly that even while their freedom of action may have been circumscribed in the Southern provinces they have been able to extend their reach in other provinces in the north and west much to the chagrin of the NATO forces.
On the other hand they have to take account of the fact that under American tutelage, the ethnically imbalanced Afghan Security Forces scheduled to reach a size of 350,000 plus by 2012, will become more proficient at using the sophisticated arms that they are now receiving. They have to calculate that the Mujahidin were not able to defeat the Najibullah army after the Soviet withdrawal. That army disintegrated much later when Soviet support ceased and Najibullah did not have the resources to pay the army or to meet its other needs. So far the Americans seem to have maintained that they would continue to foot the $6-8 billion that the Afghan Security forces would need annually
Now the big question is how the Taliban perceive the proposed US-Afghan agreement. Do the Taliban believe they have the “time” and capacity to sustain another decade of military activity against the presence of foreign troops at a time when the Afghan indigenous forces steadily become more proficient, or would they think that now that there is a definite date they have the room to negotiate an agreement under which the Americans withdraw long before the expiry of the 10 years for which the proposed agreement is supposed to last?
In my next article I will try to examine the other factors that should or would weigh with the Taliban and equally importantly with Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours as they contemplate the consequences of the proposed agreement. Of particular importance will be the reaction of Pakistan, which according to every one’s calculation will have a major role to play in a reconciliation and of course of the Russian and Chinese whose concerns about a permanent American presence in Afghanistan are well known but who also fear that a Taliban dominated Afghanistan would foment extremist or separatist tendencies which all members of the SCO have been concerned about.
