Tag: Afghan War

Ronald Reagan Made Central America a Killing Field

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration used Central America as a testing ground to rehabilitate US imperial “hard power” after defeat in Vietnam. The results were predictable: death squads, massacres, and murderous repression of left-wing movements.

Latin America has played a crucial role in the history of US empire — and not simply because of its proximity to the US. As historian Greg Grandin argues in the recently reissued Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Making of an Imperial Republic (reviewed by Hilary Goodfriend for Jacobin here), countries south of the border have been used as a crucible in the formation of US policy, a testing ground for its imperial theories, and a touchstone for domestic movements.

One critical moment was the rise of Reaganism, when neoconservatives like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Elliott Abrams steered the US’s foreign policy and rank-and-file members of the New Right took a keen interest in fighting left-wing movements in Central America. Right-wing leaders later used the lessons they gleaned from brutal counterinsurgency programmes in El Salvador in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a recent appearance on the California-based progressive radio show ‘Against the Grain‘, Grandin spoke with radical journalist Sasha Lilley about the many ways Latin America’s resistance to US empire has reshaped American politics. Their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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How important has Latin America been for the United States as an imperial power?

It’s been critically important. It’s easy to talk about Latin America as a site in which the US imposes its imperial will, carries out coups and regime changes, and pays no attention to the consequences and disastrous results. But there’s another story to tell. Latin America was a challenge to the founders of the United States. They immediately had to deal with the fact that the Western Hemisphere had multiple republics, and that they shared with the founders of the United States a sense of American exceptionalism.

Latin America resisted US expansion ideologically, economically, and politically in ways that, say, European empires prior to the collapse of Spain and England in the Western Hemisphere, or indigenous communities, couldn’t. That pushback forced the United States to figure out new strategies to project its power. Ascendant political coalitions in the United States used Latin America to work out their worldview and their tactics, and to reconcile contradictions among different constituencies.

That is something absent from most discussions of the relationship of Latin America to the United States. It’s easy to talk about Latin America as this place where US empire has run roughshod. It’s much more difficult to understand the way Latin America has shaped the domestic politics of the United States.

The 1970s marked a moment of great defeat and disarray for the United States, following the Vietnam War and Watergate, and as well with the global economic crisis of capitalism, and the unraveling of that New Deal order. How were interventions in Latin America in the 1980s a response to those crises?

Empire’s Workshop looks at the New Deal and the New Right as the quintessential twentieth century political coalitions. Reagan is elected in 1980 running on a programme of restoring US power and moral authority in the world. A lot of neoconservative analysts like Jeane Kirkpatrick saw the crisis not just as a crisis of power but a crisis of confidence. Vietnam scrambled the establishment’s ability to act in the world with an assuredness that it was doing good. Reagan’s task, and Reaganism’s task, wasn’t just to reassert power, but to re-moralise power, re-moralise militarism, and re-moralise markets.

When Reagan comes to power in 1981, there’s not a lot of places in the world where the US can actually act. The Soviet Union is still in existence, they still have nuclear weapons. The Middle East is split between allegiances to the Soviet Union and to United States. Africa’s allegiances are split. Most of South America is under anti-communist dictatorships, following coups that the US had supported: Chile in 1973, Uruguay in 1973, Bolivia in 1971, Paraguay and Argentina in 1976. So South America was secure — it was like a garrison continent.

But Central America was in revolt. The Sandinistas had won their revolution in 1979. There were powerful insurgencies in El Salvador and Nicaragua. So the Reagan administration uses Central America to work out ideas, work out tactics, to get a sense of themselves as an aspiring coalition.

One of the arguments of Empire’s Workshop is that the importance of Central America resided in its unimportance: it had no nuclear weapons, it was firmly within the US’s sphere of influence, the Soviet Union wasn’t going to object, and the US had clients it could work with and who were eager to work with the United States. Reagan could give Central America — whether we’re talking about the Contra war in Nicaragua or the death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala — to movement conservatives with little fear of consequences.

So Central America becomes the crucible for different constituencies of the New Right. Secular neoconservatives, religious theocons, militarists radicalised to the right by the Vietnam War, Soldier of Fortune–type mercenaries — Reagan basically lets loose all of these people in Central America.

We talk about the importance of Nicaragua for the Left as a kind of pilgrimage site. But scratch the surface of somebody in the new right — Blackwater’s Erik Prince, for instance — and you’ll find that they spent some time in or had something to do with the Contra war in Nicaragua.

Central America allows these relations on the New Right to thicken and contradictions to be worked out. There are tensions, for instance, between secular neoconservatives, whose vision of a restoration of American power after Vietnam wasn’t necessarily religion-based, and Pentecostals and Evangelicals. The key to this is liberation theology, which was powerful in Central America. The Sandinista revolution was as much Christian as it was Marxist; liberation theology was strong in El Salvador; it was powerful in Guatemala. So liberation theology becomes the first political religion that unites the New Right before they move on to Islam.

This is important because it forces the New Right to think through the morality of capitalism and militarism. It’s one thing to be able to project power; it’s another thing to justify it in moral terms. And a lot of the re-moralisation of markets that we associate with libertarianism was forged in arguments against liberation theology.

Liberation theologians said the market was an amoral site of greed, and that militarism made life miserable for the world’s poor. Evangelical economists, arguing directly against liberation theology, said that the market was a place that reflected God’s grace; that by striving to overcome, you expanded the area of freedom — that militarism, and the strength of the United States, was actually a reflection of God’s will.

So Central America becomes central to this emerging worldview that we generally call Reaganism.

Ronald Reagan and Geroge H.W. Bush. Photo: Public Domain

Could you give us a short history of US support for counter-insurgency in a place like El Salvador?

US involvement in El Salvador really takes off after the Cuban Revolution, when the US commits itself to strengthening — the word that they often use is “professionalise” or “centralise” — the intelligence agencies of allied states, El Salvador being one of them. In the early 1960s, the US began to create and fortify El Salvador’s security apparatus, well before there was an insurgency. El Salvador is a classic place where the counter-insurgency creates the insurgency.

A lot of this takes place under the rubric of the Alliance for Progress — John F. Kennedy’s developmentalist programme for Latin America, which was a direct response to the Cuban Revolution. Kennedy was trying to claim Castro’s revolutionary thunder: “we will complete the revolution of the Americas.”

The Alliance for Progress did promote land reform and tax reform and a certain kind of developmentalist capitalism. But it’s a classic example of “good cop, bad cop.” At the same time the Alliance for Progress was promoting moderate land reform and a little bit more just tax structure, it was also arming the militaries and strengthening the intelligence agencies of these countries, to the point where the reformists that the Alliance for Progress hoped to bolster were being singled out for execution by the death squads that the Alliance for Progress had created.

El Salvador is a classic example. US funding supported both the strengthening of the intelligence agency and the strengthening of what became a paramilitary network that used information gathered by that intelligence agency. Intelligence fed to death squads and paramilitaries singled out not just communists, and not just activists that were seen as a threat by the US, but all sorts of reformers and activists and democrats. And then there would be waves of radicalisation.

So El Salvador becomes the place where counterinsurgency is rehabilitated in the 1980s. It’s the place where militarists go down, working with the Department of Defense. The famous bumper stickers read, “El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam,” and these Department of Defense military advisors didn’t disagree. They thought El Salvador was a place to get the theory right. By that, they mostly meant preventing a deepening, direct involvement and strengthening the security apparatus of the country without increasing the number of US boots on the ground.

What lessons did they draw from this counter insurgency against the Left in Latin America? Many of the same people who cut their teeth in Latin America in the 1980s later used similar policies in launching the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a new edition of a book that I wrote right after the invasion of Iraq, when I was trying to make sense of why all of these Central American hands had come back. Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, John Poindexter — there were all of these characters from Iran-Contra that all of a sudden assumed a prominent role in the US’s post-9/11 bid to go global, to drive into the Persian Gulf.

John Negroponte was the ambassador in Honduras, where he basically ran death squads. Then he becomes very prominent in the war in Iraq.

My argument is that Latin America allows retrenchment, and then once that retrenchment takes place, the US goes global. Then once going global hits a wall or collapses, the US turns back to Latin America.

In terms of counterinsurgency, there’s a dynamic that goes back almost to the inception of the concept. Counterinsurgents are constantly talking about “fighting the other war” — constantly talking about, to use a phrase associated with Vietnam, “winning hearts and minds” or “building the state” or “building institutional capacity.” The idea is to create a state that is strong enough and capable enough to administer its territory and confront and root out the causes of insurgency.

Sometimes this “winning hearts and minds” actually entails some real reforms; other times, it’s more like window dressing. But the fact of the matter is that wherever counterinsurgency has been successful in defeating an insurgency, it’s been because of a preponderance of power and the application of what otherwise would be known as terrorism — the use of death squads.

El Salvador, for instance, was a workshop. It was a laboratory. It was a way to reapply a counterinsurgency theory that had been discredited in Vietnam — but discredited, according to these theorists, for the wrong reasons.

The reason why it didn’t work in Vietnam was because the US violated that theory and escalated and turned it into a full-on war, with boots on the ground. So these theorists said, “No, we get a chance for a do-over; we can train the security apparatuses, we can build the state, we can win hearts and minds, we can fight the other war.” By “the other war,” they meant, again, winning hearts and minds, civic action, some kind political and economic reform. They talked about this incessantly in El Salvador.

But the fact of the matter is that none of that helped defeat the FMLN in El Salvador; none of that worked to win back territory, or win allegiance, or strengthen a reformist sector within the domestic bourgeoisie and the security apparatus that would defend a general interest against out-and-out terror and out-and-out exploitation. None of that happened.

What happened is that the bodies mounted: fifty thousand disappeared, maybe seventy thousand dead. We all we all know the history of El Salvador — the US spending billions of dollars a day supporting these deaths, the massacre of El Mozote in December 1981, horrific killings throughout. That ultimately, is what at least contained the insurgents in El Salvador and brought the war to a draw.

So it’s an interesting dynamic, just constantly circling back to “we have to build the state, we have to fight the other war.” And that just never happened. You see the same dynamic in Colombia, you see the same dynamic in Afghanistan, and the same dynamic in Iraq.

NATO soldiers inspect near the site of an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan March 25, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

By 2008, a number of left-leaning governments had come to power in Latin America, the “pink tide.” To what degree did this interrupt the tried-and-true pattern of the US turning to Latin America when its imperial ambitions had created crises elsewhere?

There was a moment when Latin America, with the rise of the pink tide — starting with Chavez in Venezuela, and then continuing with Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, and so on — was governed by every historic tendency of the Latin American left. At one point, you had a trade unionist in power in Brazil, a military populist in power in Venezuela, a feminist doctor in Chile, a New Left guerrilla in Uruguay, an indigenous peasant activist in Bolivia, a liberation theologian in Paraguay. The whole slate was a historic panorama.

When Obama was elected, they were eager to welcome him into the pantheon. But what did the Obama administration do? It basically endorsed a coup in Honduras, the first turning point against the pink tide. It allowed a coup in Paraguay. It actively supported the corruption investigation against Lula in Brazil. And it did everything it could to isolate Chavez and, in terms of its energy policy, expanded fracking and natural gas to turn the United States into an energy exporter, which led to the collapse of oil prices and led to the containment of Venezuela.

Trump couldn’t take advantage of allies in Latin America either. He had Duque in Colombia, he had Bolsonaro in Brazil. And he flailed in Latin America, too. So I think — and this is an argument I make in the new epilogue to the book — that the dynamic in which Latin America serves as a workshop for the United States for ascending political coalitions no longer holds. Because the United States is exporting its own extremism.

You look at Bolivia, you look at Brazil, and what you see are libertarians; what you see is the power of the National Rifle Association, what you see are Pentecostals, what you see is a certain kind of Trumpism. Bolsonaro is an example of Trumpism on steroids. And that doesn’t actually create the conditions for using Latin America as a training ground. It’s a marker of the centrifugal forces that are pulling the United States apart.

Greg Grandin is a professor of history at Yale University. He is the author of seven books, including The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.

Sasha Lilley is the co-host and co-producer of the radio show ‘Against the Grain’ and the author of Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult.

Afghanistan Car Bombing Kills At Least 30 Security Force Personnel

The blast targeted a compound of the public protection force, a wing of the Afghan security forces, local officials said.

Kabul A car bombing in Afghanistan’s central province of Ghazni killed at least 30 Afghan security force members on Sunday, officials said. It is said that casualties could increase given the intensity and location of the blast.

Baz Mohammad Hemat, director of the provincial hospital in Ghazni, said 30 bodies and 24 injured people had been transported there. “All of the victims are security personnel,” he said.

The blast targeted a compound of the public protection force, a wing of the Afghan security forces, local officials said. It damaged civilian residences around the compound and there could be more casualties from there.

Interior ministry spokesman, Tariq Arian, confirmed that there had been a car bomb blast but did not provide further information on the target or possible casualties.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Also read: India Announces 100 High-Impact Projects for Afghanistan, Worth $80 Million

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, when contacted by Reuters, did not confirm or deny responsibility.

Afghanistan has seen a spate of car bombings over the last few months, despite peace talks being under way between the negotiation teams of the insurgent Taliban and the government in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Violence in the country, who has at war for two decades, remains unacceptably high, foreign governments and institutions say, calling for an immediate ceasefire between the Afghan government and Taliban.

Another bombing on Sunday, in the eastern province of Zabul, targeting a top provincial official, killed at least one person and injured 23, said Gul Islam Syaal, the spokesman for the province’s governor.

Haji Ata Jan Haqbayan, head of the provincial council of Zabul, suffered minor injuries in the attack on his convoy.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack on Haqbayan, an outspoken critic of the Taliban.

Robert Fisk Was a Reporter Who Brought the Wars Home and Shaped the Thinking of a Generation

For journalism students, Fisk was an obvious if intimidating role model. Of course, among journalists, some of the esteem for Fisk came through gritted teeth.

When word got out last weekend that the veteran British journalist Robert Fisk had died in a Dublin hospital, one of the strongest expressions of sympathy came from the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins.

I knew that his taking of Irish citizenship meant a great deal to him, and his influence on young practitioners in journalism and political writing was attested by the huge audiences which attended the occasions on which he spoke in Ireland. Generations, not only of Irish people but all over the world, relied on him for a critical and informed view of what was taking place in the conflict zones of the world and, even more important, the influences that were perhaps the source of the conflict.

Michael D. (as this popular president is invariably called in Ireland), who himself rose to fame as an excoriating critic of US imperialism, was always bound to emphasize Fisk’s Irish connection. But this was not some opportunistic “one of our own” blather: Fisk’s influence in Ireland was profound.

The other side of the story

As I reflect on that influence, my mind returns to September 11, 2001. That afternoon in Ireland, the grief and immersion in the suffering of New York City was palpable. (Boston and New York are both occasionally – and sometimes competitively – referred to as “the next parish over”). Irish Times journalist Conor O’Clery spent part of that day reporting live on RTÉ, the Irish national radio station, from his Battery Park City apartment, with a view of the towers.As a transplanted New Yorker in Dublin, I was asked to appear on an evening drive time show, to share my sadness but also, I promised myself, to tell some hard truths about what lay behind the attacks.

I had to join the queue. On air, the conversation was sad, but also informed and penetrating. Off air, the host and guests talked of the “chickens coming home to roost.” By the next morning, the same phrase was being used on RTÉ with the microphones on. Here in the Republic of Ireland, where for decades it had been virtually illegal to broadcast explanations and excuses for the IRA, people were on air explaining, if not excusing, Al Qaeda.

Robert Fisk’s voice was everywhere, and his ideas were vital in both creating and meeting that Irish urge for explanation. Ireland’s colonial and anti-imperial history, its political sophistication, and its strong Palestinian solidarity movement are significant factors in the opening of a discursive space that is unusual in the English-speaking world. So it would be wrong to exaggerate Fisk’s individual role – but it would also be blinkered to ignore it.When liberal-centrist writer Kathy Sheridan of the Irish Times emerged on September 15 to complain that it was “too soon” for the “other side of the story” that had been ubiquitous in Irish media all week, she felt compelled to concede a list of imperial sins that could have been ripped straight from Fisk’s dispatches:

…the million Iraqi children dead from US-led sanctions; the third of the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank which survives on £1 a day, cheek by jowl with a US-subsidized, first-world Israel; the Afghans condemned, not only to the barbarous rule of the Taliban (who began life as the well-funded pets of the US), but also to be the victims of other mass-murderous US hunts for Osama bin Laden; the swaggering, ignorant disdain with which a neophyte US president has been trashing international treaties…

Yes, that passage is not Fisk himself but rather an incredible imitation, coming from a reliable pillar of the Irish establishment — a tribute to his influence.

“The best touchstone”

Robert Fisk. Photo: Alan Liefting, Public Domain

It’s not every posh-sounding English accent that emerges as such a trusted and quotable voice across the political and media spectrum in Ireland. But Fisk had earned the respect that made him the explanatory mainstay in Ireland on 9/11 and beyond. As a young journalist, he covered the Troubles in Northern Ireland for the London Times, then did a PhD at Trinity College Dublin about Irish neutrality during World War II, later turned into a good book, In Time Of War.But it was in Lebanon during the 1980s, when he served as a correspondent while thousands of Irish soldiers served as UN peacekeepers, that the popular bond with an Irish audience was forged. His reporting of the massacre at Sabra and the Shatila refugee camps in 1982 was the most memorable moment, but Fisk was in it for the long haul.Irish Army colonel E.D. Doyle wrote in January 1991 that Fisk “was the best touchstone” for understanding the military situation in the Gulf War, partly because Irish soldiers knew he was solid: “We used to say [in Lebanon] that when Fisk criticised us in a UN operation we should examine our performance.”

By that time, Fisk worked for the London Independent. The Irish Times subscribed to the Independent’s wire service, and Fisk’s stories often featured more prominently in the Dublin newspaper than in the London one. In April 1991, Noam Chomsky told an audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that the Irish Times had the best coverage of the Gulf War of any newspaper in the English-speaking world.That quality was by no means all about Fisk: Maggie O’Kane contributed brilliant coverage from Baghdad and Michael Jansen in Cyprus used her contacts across the Middle East to illuminate the crisis. But Fisk’s unmistakable, bespectacled picture-byline, accompanying reporting and analysis mostly from Saudi Arabia, was a large part of the package.

Big pictures and small

Five years later, when Israel shelled civilians sheltering at a UN compound near Qana in southern Lebanon, the phones lit up on Ireland’s main radio phone-in show, and Fisk was, again, the “touchstone.” As I wrote in the Irish Times at the time, many callers

…were citing Robert Fisk’s brilliant, heartbreaking reporting. Fisk could not only be read most days last week in this newspaper, he was on the radio around the clock . . . unafraid to provide context, history lessons, straight good sense about proportionality and eyewitness evidence that contradicted official versions of events … a Fisk strength is the ability to move from the big picture — strategy, geopolitics — to the small — a woman carrying the body of her father.

A friend who produced TV and radio shows over those decades recalled this week how readily Fisk would go out of his way to appear in Irish media, where even conservative presenters mostly deferred to “Bob.” His influence was evident when, in February 2003, Dublin hosted one of the world’s largest demonstrations, per capita, against the impending Iraq war.

Fisk was, even then, controversial: in the early 2000s, the right-wing columnists in Ireland’s Sunday Independent (then owned by the same company as his home paper in London) made him something of a target. But he seemed to like arguments and tended to swat opponents away with authoritative ease.

On one occasion in 2010, I was the moderator at a debate about the media and the Middle East where Fisk was the major draw for a paying audience. Backstage before the event, Fisk mischievously asked me and others whether a particular opponent had ever been to Israel/Palestine. When we replied that to the best of our knowledge, the man had not, Fisk prepared the inevitable and entertaining ambush: “I assume you’ve been to the Middle East … no?!”

Over the years, Fisk’s public appearances in Ireland, for those “huge audiences” to which Michael D. referred, were generally at such widely marketed events – book festivals, summer schools, prestigious campus debates – rather than events within anti-war circles or the Left. His door-stopping books, Pity the Nation and The Great War for Civilisation, still turn up in the most surprising Irish households – homes that carry no other hallmarks of left-wing tendencies. Popular understanding here of the sins of empire rests heavily on his shoulders.

Until a decade ago – and probably to this day for that majority of people who have not been caught up in arguments over the Syrian civil war – a reference to something said or written by Robert Fisk would be enough to settle a debate in Ireland, insofar as such a thing can ever be said to be settled.

US troops in Kandahar province, Afghanistan August 2, 2017. Photo: Reuters/Ahmad Nadeem

For my journalism students in the early days of the Afghan and Iraq wars, Fisk was an obvious if intimidating role model. For their family members, he was likely to be the name that came to mind: “Ah you’re studying journalism – Robert Fisk!” When a relation of one recent graduate encountered Fisk at an Italian literary festival in 2007, the result was a signed festival program brought home as a gift and bearing a command from the Great Man: “Monitor the centres of power!”

Of course, among journalists, here as elsewhere, some of the esteem for Fisk came through gritted teeth. He could be contemptuous of other reporters and was the scourge of those war correspondents who were “embedded” during US wars. There was some schadenfreude when, travelling without military protection in December 2001, he was assaulted by Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

He had learned his mistrust of the military – and of the reporters who get too close to it – the hard way, here in Ireland. When, in 2010, the Saville Inquiry published its long-awaited findings on Derry’s Bloody Sunday massacre, nearly four decades after the event, Fisk put his own profession in the firing line:

[D]id we British journalists have something to answer for in our slavish adherence to the notion of the British Army’s integrity? I don’t think we cared about the Irish — either the Catholic or the Protestant variety. I don’t think we cared about Ireland.

Fisk, self-evidently, cared about Ireland. His own historical “touchstone” was the settlement of empires after World War I: in his telling, the world of war that he covered across Eurasia for nearly fifty years was the rotten fruit of that bloody soil, stretching from Ireland in the northwest to Iraq in the southeast. He was scathing about “peace processes” that attempted to pave over unjust history.

In his mostly warm-hearted recollections of the late John Hume in August this year, Fisk recalled scolding the Irish politician, over dinner in Derry two decades ago, for glib efforts to translate “peace-making” from Northern Ireland to Israel/Palestine: “The nearest Irish approximation to the Israeli-Arab struggle, I suggested, would be an attempt to mediate an end to violence after the 17th century dispossession of the Catholics.”

It is difficult to imagine a more “Fisky” passage, in its stentorian tone, its historical reach, its political acuity, its intellectual confidence, its personal cockiness — the shine was still on Hume’s Nobel Peace Prize, after all, as Fisk lectured him about making peace — and yet also its context of affection and conviviality. In Ireland as elsewhere, such moments will be missed.

Harry Browne lectures in media at Technological University Dublin. His books include Hammered by the Irish and The Frontman.

This article was first published on Jacobin.

US Goes For Strict Monitoring of Pakistan’s F-16s

Some in India saw the announcement as subterfuge for upgrading Pakistan’s F-16s, while others saw it as strict US oversight.

Washington: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his team have declared their US visit a success. They have reason to be pleased, mainly on account of President Donald Trump’s energetic endorsement of Pakistan’s role in the Afghan peace process and his inexplicable claims about India seeking mediation in Kashmir.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, was so convinced of the trip’s success and the improved scenario, he set aside diplomatic caution and accused two US officials – White House senior director for South Asia Lisa Curtis and acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia Alice Wells – of shutting the door on Pakistan in the past.

The question is if the door has opened somewhat, if at all. The good optics of Khan sitting beside Trump in the White House worked in Pakistan’s favour, but have things changed substantively for the better for Rawalpindi?

Also Read: True or False, Trump Kashmir Bombshell Raises Questions About Modi’s Political Judgment

Two public documents by the US government are worth considering. First, the fact sheet released by the White House within minutes of Trump’s claims on Kashmir, which said Washington was asking Pakistan “to do more” to facilitate the Afghanistan peace talks.

Referring to terrorist groups operating within Pakistan, the fact sheet said “it is vital that Pakistan take action to shut down all groups once and for all.”

The fact sheet was obscured in the excitement over Trump’s offer to mediate in Kashmir, but it is a document on the basis of which Curtis and Wells presumably held discussions with the Pakistani delegation. The main thrust was “to do more” on key issues.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters

Monitoring F-16s

More significantly, a day after Khan’s visit ended, the Pentagon announced that it will conduct “24/7 end-use monitoring” of Pakistan’s F-16 fleet by posting 60 representatives on the ground. This was hardly a vote of confidence. It was the first reference to 24/7 monitoring.

Some in India saw the announcement as subterfuge for upgrading Pakistan’s F-16s while others saw it as strict US oversight of Pakistan’s F-16s.

“After Balakot, they want to have proper oversight. It is a stringent imposition of US rules on Pakistan,” a well-informed Indian observer noted. “The notification is very explicit.”

It’s well-known that US officials had ordered a review of the Pakistan’s F-16 fleet after its misuse was reported in the wake of the Pulwama attack in February by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Indian officials at the time had stressed that Pakistan was in violation of its F-16 end-user agreement, which had been explicitly discussed by US officials in public testimony to the US Congress. New Delhi had also presented evidence of US-made Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles or AMRAAMS used by Pakistan in an air raid on Indian territory.

An additional controversy had arisen over whether an Indian MiG-21 had shot down a Pakistani F-16. A US media report quoting US officials said no F-16 was shot down after a physical count was done. But a Pentagon spokesman told the Hindustan Times he was unaware of any such investigation and the state department declined to discuss details of the end-user monitoring agreement.

While the public controversies raged, the US government was making its own internal assessment of whether Pakistan was in violation. The decision to station more US personnel on the ground hints broadly at what the conclusion might have been.

A sop or not?

The announcement on 24/7 monitoring by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency came last Friday, soon after Khan’s departure. It was seen as a sop to Pakistan by many, but was it?

The official press release said the state department had approved a possible Foreign Military Sale (FMS) to Pakistan to support a “technical security team” for the F-16 programme for an estimated cost of $125 million.

The notification by DSCA, which leads, directs and manages foreign security assistance for the Pentagon, was sent to the US Congress on July 26. It does not mean resumption of US security aid to Pakistan, a state department official told The Wire. Nearly $2 billion in various military and security aid to Pakistan were blocked last year by the Trump administration.

Also Read: Is the US-Pakistan Transactional Relationship Back on Track?

“There has been no change to the security assistance suspension announced by the president in January 2018 for Pakistan,” the state department official said. But the suspension allowed narrow exceptions in support of US national security interests, he added, implying this was one such allowance.

The team of monitors to be stationed in Pakistan will be supplied by Booz Allen Hamilton Engineering Services, which has been chosen as the principal contractor. Pakistan is said to have 85 functioning F-16s of various models in its inventory.

Much larger sale to India

At the same time, the DSCA also approved a much larger sale to India – $670 million worth of spare and repair parts, technical and logistical support for its C-17 fleet. It was noteworthy that the two announcements came within minutes of each other.

Besides the vast difference in the amount of money involved, perhaps, the idea was to show the difference in the nature of the partnership – Pakistan was getting 24/7 end-use monitoring of its F-16s fleet while India was referred to as an “important force for political stability” in the Indo-Pacific and South Asia region.

But critics saw the Pakistan announcement as the return of good old days for Rawalpindi’s generals and their demands and desires once again coming front and centre.

One Indian analyst said the $125 million for Pakistan was actually meant for retrofitting 18 of the F-16s with updated Pratt & Whitney engines and that Pakistan was well on its way to refurbishing its entire fleet and lengthening its life.

While Pakistan has certainly managed to get its foot in the door in Washington with a well-crafted visit, the DSCA announcement is not about opening the store room. At least, not yet.

Pakistani Rangers and Indian Border Security Force personnel (obscured) lower the flags of the two countries during a daily flag lowering ceremony at the India-Pakistan joint border at Wagah some 20 km (12 miles) to the east of Lahore, December 14, 2006. Credit: REUTERS/Mian Khursheed/File Photo

The idea was to show the difference in the nature of the US’s partnership with India and Pakistan. Photo: REUTERS/ Mian Khursheed /File

Continuation of existing contract

A US official said the Pakistan announcement is a continuation of an existing contract, which was about to expire in December this year. The new approval will finance the programme for the next five years.

First, $125 million is hardly the kind of money that will buy engine upgrades. But it sounds about right for salaries and logistics support for overpaid Booz Allen contractors to provide “oversight of operations” for the next five years.

The oversight will require 60 representatives to be posted in Pakistan for the express purpose of protecting “U.S. technology through the continued presence of U.S. personnel that provide 24/7 end-use monitoring.” The idea is also be to protect US technology from Chinese spies in Pakistan.

Also Read: For Pakistan, the ICJ’s Jadhav Ruling Calls for Critical Self-Evaluation

A US security contractor can make anywhere between $100,000 to $250,000 a year depending on the country he is deployed in and the company he/she works for. Besides the salary, defence contractors claim expenses for offices, residence, frequent travel, logistics and support staff. An extremely high profit margin is built in because of the “danger” involved.

A good comparison is the cost of deployment of US troops. Studies have shown that it cost the US government about $1 million per soldier per year in Afghanistan in 2009. By 2014, the figure had doubled.

At the same time, US policy and attendant moves vis-à-vis Pakistan do require close monitoring and a healthy dose of scepticism. There’s no telling what turns Washington may make given Trump’s desperation to get out of Afghanistan.

Seema Sirohi is a Washington DC-based commentator.

Almost 4,000 Afghans Killed or Wounded in First Six Months of 2019: UN Report

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in its latest report ground raids and clashes caused the most civilian casualties, followed by bomb attacks and air strikes.

Kabul: At least 3,812 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of 2019 in the war against militant groups, including a big increase in the number of casualties caused by government and NATO-led troops, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The latest casualty figures were released as talks between the Taliban and US officials to end the 18-year Afghan war entered an important stage, with US negotiators aiming to reach a peace deal before September 1.

However, the war has raged on despite the diplomatic efforts, forcing civilians to live under the constant threat of being targeted by militants or being caught up in ground fighting, or becoming inadvertent victims of air strikes by Afghan government and NATO-led forces.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in its latest report ground raids and clashes caused the most civilian casualties, followed by bomb attacks and air strikes.

Taliban and Islamic State fighters killed 531 Afghans and wounded 1,437 between January 1 and June 30. The hardline Islamist groups deliberately targeted 985 civilians, including government officials, tribal elders, aid workers, and religious scholars, UNAMA said in its report.

It said pro-government forces killed 717 Afghans and wounded 680 in the six months to June 30, a 31% increase from the corresponding period in 2018.

Also read: Kabul: 20 Killed, 50 Injured in Attack on Vice Presidential Candidate’s Office

At least 144 women and 327 children were killed and more than 1,000 wounded across the country.

Air strikes caused 519 civilian casualties, 150 of whom were children.

“Parties to the conflict may give differing explanations for recent trends, each designed to justify their own military tactics,” UNAMA human rights chief Richard Bennett said.

“The fact remains that only a determined effort to avoid civilian harm, not just by abiding by international humanitarian law but also by reducing the intensity of the fighting, will decrease the suffering of civilian Afghans,” he said.

The US and other NATO troops are stationed in Afghanistan as part of a mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces and to carry out counter-terrorism operations.

Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, rejected the methods and findings used by UNAMA, saying the collection of evidence by US forces was “more thorough, evidentiary and accurate”.

Leggett, however, did not give any US military figures for civilian casualties but said US forces worked closely with Afghan security forces to prevent them.

“We follow the highest standards of accuracy and accountability and always work to avoid harm to civilian non-combatants,” Leggett said.

The US is trying to negotiate a deal under which foreign forces would pull out in return for security guarantees by the Taliban, including a pledge that the country will not become a safe haven for terror groups.

The Taliban control or contest half the country, more than at any time since being overthrown by US-led Afghan forces in late 2001, but they have rejected calls for a ceasefire until all foreign forces leave Afghanistan.

The Afghan government and the Taliban were not immediately available to comment on the UN report.

(Reuters)

US Wants to Reduce Troops in Afghanistan by 2020

The US formally ended its Afghan combat mission in 2014, however, around 14,000 US troops remain to provide air support and training to Afghan security forces.


US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that President Donald Trump directed him to reduce US combat troop numbers in Afghanistan by the next presidential election in 2020.

Speaking during an event in Washington, Pompeo said that the troop drawdown was an “unambiguous” directive from President Trump, although he did not provide a specific timeline or any troop numbers.

“End the endless wars, draw down, reduce,” said Pompeo, adding that the reduction would also apply to forces from other countries currently in Afghanistan.

“We hope that overall the need for combat forces in the region is reduced,” Pompeo said. “I try not to do timelines, but I’m optimistic.”

The US formally ended its Afghan combat mission in 2014, however, around 14,000 US troops remain to provide air support and training to Afghan security forces.

The US is currently negotiating with the Taliban over an end to the 18-year-long war in Afghanistan. The Taliban has said that direct talks with the Afghan government in Kabul is contingent on the complete withdrawal of foreign forces.

Taliban negotiations continue

Pompeo’s comments come as the US prepares for another round of talks with the Taliban. US officials have avoided announcing a timeline, as disclosing plans to withdraw troops could affect Washington’s negotiating position if the Taliban believes the US will withdraw troops regardless of the outcomes of talks.

Also read: No Direct Talks With Kabul Until US Troops Withdraw: Taliban

The Trump administration’s South Asia strategy was introduced in August 2017, and called for an open-ended deployment of US forces, while forcing the Taliban to negotiate a peace deal with the Afghan government. The Taliban continues to carry out frequent attacks across the country, despite engaging in talks.

On Monday, two US service members were killed in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of US troops killed there in 2019 to at least 11.

The US State Department said Thursday that Pompeo and  Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had agreed to “accelerate efforts” to end the war, with Pompeo committing to a “conditions-based drawdown of troops.”

Last week, during a meeting with Pakistani President Imran Khan, Trump drew controversy by saying if he wanted to win the war it would be over in 10 days and “Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth.”

Ghani responded by asking to “clarification” and said that while Kabul “supports the US efforts for ensuring peace in Afghanistan …foreign heads of state cannot determine Afghanistan’s fate.”

More than 2,400 US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001, and the US has spent more than than $900 billion on military operations and construction of infrastructure.

This article was originally published on Deutsche Welle.

Afghanistan Seeks Explanation on Trump Talk of ‘Wiping It Out’

The US president said he could end the Afghan war in ten days by “wiping out Afghanistan”, but did not want to kill 10 million people.

Kabul: Afghanistan called on Tuesday for an explanation of comments by US President Donald Trump in which he said he could end the Afghan war in just ten days by “wiping out Afghanistan” but did not want to “kill 10 million people”.

Trump‘s remarks followed a meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan at the White House on Monday, during which Trump voiced optimism that Pakistan could help broker a political settlement to end the nearly 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The comment about wiping out Afghanistan prompted a stiff response from its president Ashraf Ghani, who issued a statement. Afghanistan has been excluded from talks between the US and the Taliban, and the country accuses Pakistan of supporting the insurgency.

“The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate,” the presidential palace said in a statement.

“While the Afghan government supports the U.S. efforts for ensuring peace in Afghanistan, the government underscores that foreign heads of state cannot determine Afghanistan’s fate in absence of the Afghan leadership,” it said.

Also read: Misguided Talks With the Taliban Won’t Bring Peace to Afghanistan

It called for clarification of Trump‘s statement.

During his comments in Washington, Trump said that Pakistan was helping the US “extricate” itself from Afghanistan, where the US was acting as a “policeman” rather than fighting a war.

“If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump told reporters at the White House where he was hosting a visit by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

“I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone,” he said.

“It would be over in – literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to do – I don’t want to go that route.”

Trump‘s comments could further complicate efforts to reach a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who travels to Kabul on Tuesday to continue meetings, said on Twitter that Trump had reiterated the need for a negotiated peace.

“There is no reasonable military solution to the war in Afghanistan, and that peace must be achieved through a political settlement,” Khalilzad said.

(Reuters) 

US Envoy Says Latest Peace Talks with Taliban ‘Most Productive’ so Far

In a sign of progress of foreign force withdrawal, the Taliban agreed on the sidelines of the peace talks to hold separate discussions with a group of Afghan delegates.

Kabul: US and Taliban officials will reconvene on Tuesday to continue peace talks described as the “most productive session” by a top US negotiator leading the discussions with the hardline Islamists group to end the Afghan war.

The warring sides started the seventh round of peace talks last week, aiming to hammer out a schedule for the withdrawal of foreign troops in exchange for Taliban guarantees that international militant groups will not use Afghanistan as a base for launching attacks.

In a tweet on Saturday, US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been holding peace talks with the Taliban to end the eighteen-year war in Afghanistan since last year, said the latest round of discussions was the “most productive session” to date.

About 20,000 foreign troops, most of them American, are in Afghanistan as part of a US-led NATO mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces. Some US forces carry out counter-terrorism operations.

On a trip to Kabul last month, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the US was close to finishing a draft agreement with the militants on counter-terrorism assurances, adding he hoped a peace pact could be reached by Sept. 1.

Khalilzad, an Afghan-born American diplomat, wants to secure a political settlement with the Taliban, which now controls more Afghan territory than at any time since being toppled in 2001 by US-led Forces.

Also read: Afghan Schools Left Unprotected by Government and International Community

Clarity on a final agreement on the timetable of foreign force withdrawal has been elusive so far, but in a sign of progress, the Taliban agreed on the sidelines of the peace talks to hold separate discussions with a group of Afghan delegates.

Doha meeting 

Both sides decided on Saturday to put the peace talks on hold for two days, to allow for a meeting between rival Afghan groups to be held in Qatar, Taliban and US officials said.

US officials are demanding a ceasefire agreement, and a commitment to direct talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government before a peace deal is finalised.

Sohail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Qatar’s capital, Doha, said the ‪US-Taliban dialogue would resume after the two-day intra-Afghan conference.

A previously planned meeting between Afghan representatives in April collapsed before it started amid disagreement over the size of the proposed 250-strong Afghan delegation as well as over its status as a representative body.

This time, about 40 high-profile Afghan figures and activists will fly to Doha but will not have any official status — a condition made necessary by the Taliban’s refusal to deal directly with the Western-backed government in Kabul.

The Taliban have stressed that those attending the talks planned for Sunday and Monday will only do so in a “personal capacity.”

Also read: Afghan Working Women Targets of Violence for Working Outside the Home

A senior Taliban official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ensuring the protection of the rights of women and minorities would be discussed in the Doha talks, which have been facilitated by German and Qatari officials.

Despite intensified diplomatic efforts to end the 18-year long war in Afghanistan, deadly violence has surged across the country.

Last week, the Taliban claimed a truck bomb attack in Kabul that killed six people and wounded 105 civilians, many of them children.

(Reuters)

Killed, Orphaned, Sold – Afghan War Takes Brutal Toll on Children

In a country where half the population is younger than 15, Afghanistan’s 17-year war has arguably hit children the hardest. Some 927 children were killed last year.

Kabul/Balkh: After fighting forced Mohammad Khan, a villager from the northern Afghanistan province of Sar-e Pul, to move his family to the more secure province of Balkh last year, they quickly fell on harder times.

Khan’s wife grew gravely ill, he could not find work and struggled to feed their seven children. So in January, Khan sold their baby, just 40 days old, to a neighbour.

“I sold him for 70,000 afghanis ($929) so that my other children would not die of hunger,” he said.

Afghan girl practices dance

An Afghan girl practices a traditional dance at an Afghan Child Education and Care Organization centre (AFCECO) in Kabul, March 3, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

In a country where half the population is younger than 15, Afghanistan’s 17-year war has arguably hit children the hardest. Some 927 children were killed last year, the most since records have been kept, according to a UN report released in February.

Aid workers say they are seeing a growing number of children orphaned or forced to work in the streets.

Afghan girls chat to each others

Afghan girls chat to each others at an Afghan Child Education and Care Organization centre (AFCECO) in Kabul, March 3, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

“I think the hope that used to exist, doesn’t anymore,” said Adele Khodr, the representative for UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency, in Afghanistan.

Also read: The Women of War: A Short History of IS Brides, Nazi Guards and FARC Insurgents

Aschiana, a charity that provides school half a day for children who beg and sell in Kabul’s streets, has seen the number of Afghan children at risk rise sharply in recent years as the Taliban seized more territory across the country.

It has been forced to reduce the number of children it helps, however, as its funding from donors declined, said Engineer Mohammad Yousef, Aschiana’s director.

Afghan girl watches

An Afghan girl watches while others practice a traditional dance at an Afghan Child Education and Care Organization centre (AFCECO) in Kabul, March 3, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

“Children do not belong to political groups, for this reason they are ignored in Afghanistan,” he said, walking through dark hallways and classrooms where lights are turned off to save money. “They don’t have power.”

Zabiullah Mujahed, 12, is learning to draw at Aschiana and hopes to become a painter. He spends the balance of his day polishing shoes on Kabul’s streets to earn up to 100 Afghanis per day ($1.32).

Afghan girls attend a class

Afghan girls attend a class at the Aschiana centre in Kabul, March 5, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

The money is critical to support himself, his mother and six siblings, after his father was killed in a Taliban suicide attack four years ago.

“I’m worried about when peace will come and what will happen to my future,” he said. “If I don’t work, my mother, brothers, and sisters will remain hungry.”

Long road

Girls were banned from attending school under the Taliban government’s five-year rule that ended when the Islamists were ousted by U.S.-backed forces in 2001. Enabling girls’ education has been a key goal of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government and its foreign allies.

But some 3.7 million school-age children are still not in school, according to a first-of-its-kind UNICEF report in June 2018.

Afghan girls studying

Afghan girls attend a class at the Aschiana centre in Kabul, March 5, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

Worsening security, poverty and migration have all made educating children more difficult in recent years, Khodr said.

Sexual abuse and trafficking of boys, a practice that exploded during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, has also worsened, said Yasin Mohammadi, project manager for the non-governmental organisation Youth Health and Development Organization (YHDO).

Boys from rural areas have flocked to cities such as Kabul and Herat to find work to support families, leaving them vulnerable to those employers who take them in and molest them before circulating them to other abusers, he said.

Afghan boy washes car

An Afghan boy washes a car in Kabul, March 12, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

The practice of men sexually abusing boys, known by the Dari slang term “bacha bazi” for “boy play”, has been illegal in Afghanistan for only a year, and so far there are few known examples of perpetrators being sentenced.

The Afghanistan government’s director of children’s issues, Najib Akhlaqi, acknowledges that the situation for children is eroding. Progress is slow, but underway, he said, including drafting a national, long-term plan to help children.

“I am only one person. We can’t solve all these problems,” he told Reuters in an interview. “It takes a long time.”

Perils of peace

Aid groups welcome the prospect of peace but worry that the inclusion of the Taliban in any post-settlement government could see a slide back towards the hardline Islamist rule it imposed between 1996 and 2001.

The Taliban’s possible role in any new Afghanistan government has not been defined as the latest round of talks with the United States wrapped up.

Afghan girls

Afghan girls sit on a bed at an Afghan Child Education and Care Organization centre (AFCECO) in Kabul, March 3, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

“The Taliban never supported children, never supported people. I think we would see a worse situation than today,” said Pashtana Rasol, executive director of the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization orphanage.

Also read: Afghan Capital Rebuilds From Ashes of War, But What Next?

Rasol, who was orphaned herself at age eight after she says the Taliban killed her father, doubts that the orphanages she runs would remain open under a Taliban-led government.

“We are raising very powerful women here,” Rasol said in a Kabul orphanage where smiling girls practised a dance routine, twirling in brightly coloured dresses. “We want the girls to be improved, to be teachers, doctors, but of course the Taliban and the fundamentalist people do not want it.”

Afghan children attend a class at the Aschiana center in Kabul

Afghan children attend a class at the Aschiana centre in Kabul, March 5, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the fault for the war’s devastating impact on Afghan children lies with “foreign invaders”, adding that it has an organisation that helps orphans in areas that it controls.

If a peace accord is struck, the Taliban would encourage non-governmental organizations to continue their work in the country, but they would be under close scrutiny to ensure their activities adjust to cultural and religious values, he said.

Yousef, director of Aschiana, worries that women may not be able to work in a society with greater Taliban influence, putting more children at risk.

“Peace is very important to children,” he said. “But we are looking for real peace.”

A Taliban Perspective on Recent Peace Talks for Afghanistan

Since US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad launched his peace initiative in October 2018, more Taliban have come to contemplate an end to the war.

When members of the Taliban’s Political Commission in Doha sat down with US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad on January 21, talks were expected to last only a couple of days. Instead, the two sides talked for six days. By the end of the week, many Afghans hoped there might even be a ceasefire announcement.

Eventually, an exhausted Khalilzad flew to Kabul, to brief the Afghan government and political leaders that there was progress but no final deal. Members of the Taliban told researchers working with me that the negotiators were cautiously optimistic. They had concluded that a peace deal might actually be attainable.

But, in the following days, contradictory narratives circulated among the Taliban about what peace might look like, and the price they were prepared to pay for it. These narratives provided a timely reminder that preparing an armed movement to embrace an end to violent conflict is an immense political challenge, for the leaders of that movement, for mediators and for the battlefield enemies.

Also read: India, Others Briefed by US Envoy on ‘Progress’ in Taliban Peace Talks

A victory narrative

The Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are predominantly millennials and many carry phones and post on Facebook. They took up the positive tone and celebrated the prospect that the war would end and peace would come. Theirs was an uncomplicated message, with no political caveats. This was a remarkable development as, until now, Taliban popular discourse had typically portrayed “peace” as a foreign conspiracy to undermine the legitimate jihad.

As an indicator of the Taliban mood, on the day after Khalilzad’s departure, an audio of a tarana, or ballad, was widely circulated on WhatsApp. It articulates a narrative of victory, envisaging a Taliban army, in their signature white turbans, sweeping across the country.

What a day will it be, the day that we are in the heart of Kabul,
And like a flock of white-feathered birds, our convoy will be drawn up before the gates of Kabul.
What a time it will be, the day when we have all become one,
When we are independent and free and are as one against the foreigners, when we have become as one against the foreigners.

Taliban veterans described to me a gulf in perceptions, with uninformed juniors thinking the war is about to end, while senior figures know that there is no deal.

According to the Taliban victory narrative, by agreeing to negotiate with the Taliban, the Americans have accepted that they have been defeated in Afghanistan and just want to extricate their troops safely. Because the Afghan government in Kabul is entirely dependent on external support, the Taliban can easily topple it. Hardliners push this victory narrative to argue they don’t even need any further negotiations, as the Americans are bound to leave anyway.

Also read: India, Others Briefed by US Envoy on ‘Progress’ in Taliban Peace Talks

Meanwhile, in their official internal briefings to the fighters, circulated as audio messages over WhatsApp that I have heard, Taliban spokesmen maintained a calculated ambiguity, compatible with both the victory narrative and that of negotiated peace. The spokesmen confirmed in these messages that the Taliban delegation had discussed withdrawal of foreign troops, which is the main Taliban demand.

But they denied reports that there had been any agreement on a ceasefire or to include the Afghan government in talks, both of which contradict the victory narrative. And they confirmed that talks would resume after consultation with the Afghan Taliban’s leadership, based in Pakistan.

How to compromise

The dilemma underlying these contrasting Taliban narratives concerns the legitimacy and necessity of compromise at the end of a war. The potential peace deal taking shape in Afghanistan would involve a ceasefire, a negotiation about the future of governance among the Afghan parties and an incremental withdrawal of US troops.

For the Taliban, even this simple framework represents a compromise. Until now, they have pledged to fight until the last foreign troops leave, refused to negotiate with the Afghan government and ruled out any power-sharing arrangement.

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani talks with the U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad during a meeting in Kabul, Afghanistan, on January 27, 2019. Credit: Reuters

After the Doha round of talks in January, the Taliban negotiators seem ready to contemplate some degree of compromise, but have had to refer to the leadership – whose decision-making is deliberately opaque. My ongoing research into Taliban political culture indicates that the leadership has assembled a long list of arguments against the very notion of a negotiated settlement.

They feel compromise is unnecessary because the US will inevitably withdraw its troops before the 2020 US election, with or without a deal. The Taliban leadership is also concerned that hint of a compromise would undermine the jihadi spirit which motivates their troops. Compromise could split the movement or make it impossible to resume the conflict if a deal fell apart. They also fear appearing to betray the blood of the martyrs sacrificed in the hope of total victory.

The Taliban has championed the idea of an emirate as a political system vesting all power and authority with their supreme leader. Power-sharing would amount to a renunciation of this idea of emirate. Less spoken about, but historically a key consideration for the Taliban leadership, is the issue of jihadi solidarity.

Any deal would mean renunciation of the al-Qaeda relationship. Almost two decades ago, the then Taliban emir, Mullah Omar, refused to give up Osama bin Laden to the Americans. Breaking solidarity with al-Qaeda and fellow mujahideen would still be a bitter pill for a Taliban leader.

Different pressures

The leadership’s final argument is one around pressure. The Taliban embraced talks because they felt under political pressure from Pakistan and countries in the region to sit down. The leadership may calculate that, by showing up for talks, they have done enough to mitigate that pressure and that blaming the US for the lack of a deal may be an acceptable outcome.

Also read: Taliban Appoints New Political Leader to Join US-Taliban Peace Talks

Whether there is now any real progress towards peace depends, in large part, on how these arguments are resolved within the Taliban movement. That the leadership has acknowledged that its representatives are engaged in serious talks is a significant step forward. But the leadership itself has not yet embraced compromise, nor has it taken any steps to prepare the movement for a settlement short of total victory.

The default position for the Taliban leadership would be to let talks drag on for a while and then double down on the strategy of jihad until victory by launching a spring offensive. However, what has changed since Khalilzad launched his peace initiative in October 2018 is that more Taliban have come to contemplate an end to the war and even some senior figures have concluded that this can only be achieved by compromise.

Afghanistan is still probably a long way away from a peace deal. But the shift in Taliban calculus is a helpful foundation for the next stage of peacemaking.

Michael Semple, Visiting Research Professor, Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, Queen’s University Belfast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.