Negoitiating with the Taliban

Todd,

<i>Afghanistan is a bottom-up nation, so we must fix it bottom-up. </i>

I'm not at all sure that we can "fix" Afghanistan, or that we should try. Seems to me that our job is not to govern Afghanistan, or to dictate how it will be governed, but to assure that all the parties aspiring to power know beyond doubt that attacking us or harboring those who do has very unpleasant consequences.

Unfortunately the mission crept, and it crept to a point where we adopted goals that we haven't the capacity to achieve.

<i>There are distinct rifts between the Taliban and the taliban. The Taliban have a national/international agenda. The taliban are only concerned with their local areas. Often, the taliban ignore Taliban directives because it conflicts with their local agendas. We have to continue to exploit these rifts through non-kinetic engagements.</i>

This interests me, and I'd like to know more about it from people with experience on the ground in these local environments. I've personally witnessed how broad-focus ideologically driven insurgent leaders can be abandoned by their followers when the local issues that motivated the followers were addressed, and I've always wondered if that could be done, at least in some places, in Afghanistan.

In order...

1. I don't think we can validly assume that Iran's actions, or anyone's, are driven by paranoia or by response to provocation. Other actors can and do proactively pursue their own perceived interests, and will continue to pursue them no matter what we do. The state of our relationship with Iran is not purely a consequence of our choices, and it takes two to improve a relationship. I see no reason to expect that a more conciliatory position on our part would significantly impact the Iranian government's perception of their own interests and opportunities: they will simply try to exploit whatever move we make for their own benefit.

2. Whether we are imposed or not in Afghanistan, a formal decision to dismiss a government that we have recognized, drop the constitution, and impose changes on our own initiative would be an enormous escalation. Essentially i9t would be a declaration that the US governs Afghanistan. I'm not sure such a declaration is in our interests, and I'm not sure the US can or should try to dictate how Afghanistan will be governed.

3. Whether or not we "play straight" with Iran and Pakistan, they will pursue their own perceived interests, which will diverge from ours. There's not a lot we can do about that. The impact of that divergence on us is less a consequence of our relationship with those countries than of our decision to take on long-term commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. We can't determine what other parties need, and we can't stop them from pursuing what we want. Inclusion may be an ideal "solution" for us, but how ideal is it for the parties concerned? Seems to me that pushing the Taliban and the Karzai crowd into a "government" with a bunch of power up for grabs is a lot like sticking two male dogs in a cage with a bitch in permanent heat. You can paper it over with all the Constitution you want, but fur is still gonna fly until somebody gets beaten into submission. We're talking about Afghanistan, not Massachusetts. It's not about inclusion or equity or balance or Constitutions. It's about power. It's not our game and we can't impose our rules. If we try, they will be ignored.

I don't believe that anyone in that picture cares whether we care or not. When we go, we're gone. Can't see them caring much about democracy either.

Salon rules don't go very far in the jungle.

With regards to Iran, I love the response from a senior Israeli officer when asked by the media "how far will Israel go to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons?" His response: "2000 kilometers!"

Some great counterpoints, Anonymous, and I agree with a lot of them. Afghanistan is a bottom-up nation, so we must fix it bottom-up. As already discussed, they have no real comprehension of a central government, nor do they care. Their world is centralized around the village leadership. We are attempting to "connect" the local populace with GIRoA, but I believe this will come naturally as we guide and assist district and provincial governors to bring security to their constituents. And if we don't succeed, what difference does it really make? Get rid of the big T Taliban influence and the lil' t taliban will wither, die, and the fighters will go back to their farms and opium trade. After all, Iran is the biggest end-user of Afghani opium followed closely by Russia.

There are distinct rifts between the Taliban and the taliban. The Taliban have a national/international agenda. The taliban are only concerned with their local areas. Often, the taliban ignore Taliban directives because it conflicts with their local agendas. We have to continue to exploit these rifts through non-kinetic engagements.

v/r

Todd

In order:

1. In rebuilding our relationship with Iran we serve to reduce their paranoia as to what we or our other allies might be preparing to do to them, we mitigate their concerns as to how others might leverage Iraq, and we create inroads to better wield US influence in Iran.

2. We already are imposed. The issue is not one of "impose or not impose," the issue is one of "impose in a manner that is effective or go home." We can't play this game half way, yet that is what the US always tries to do. As my mom used to say "in or out, but don't just stand there with the door open."

3. By "straight" I don't mean upfront and honest; I mean in a working relationship. Working relationships of this nature are rarely upfront or honest. But if we find a balance point with these two book ends, the books will be ok. Without the bookends, it demands we stand there and hold the books up personally.

4. Inclusion. Sure they want control, but they are denied inclusion. Don't agonize over what some party might want, focus on what they need. So long as we allow the Northern Alliance to exclude the Taliban over our fears that an included Taliban might actually be the government the majority of the people want (little thing called democracy...) is not very smart on our part. The old Taliban regime acted poorly because frankly, no one cared. Now we care, and they will have to act differently if they ever do achieve "control."

Sorry, above is mine.

Jason,

We probably agree on about 90%, but three key areas where I think you need to reconsider:

1. Long-term geo-politics trumps the short-term concerns of the GWOT

a. Iran is a critical past and future partner for the US in balancing our interests in the Middle East. Sure their current government postures against us, and certainly control of Iraq is an area where we will always compete. Saddam served a critical role as the buffer between Shiite Iran and the Sunni Arabian Peninsula. We bought the job of being that buffer when we decided to take him out. Because we sought to make it a democratic Iraq we then ensured that Iran would seek to make us fail completely so that they could gain ultimate control; and the Saudis would seek to ensure we only partially succeeded, having to remain in place with significant US numbers while never quite getting to democracy.

b. So, in fact, Iran is no more our enemy than the Saudis are (and the Saudis are no more our friend than Iran is as well); and in the long term Iran is the more important of the two. We all just have different interests in regards to Iraq. By rebuilding our relations with Iran we take that pressure off of Iraq; and by distancing ourselves from the Saudis we force them to have to look seriously at the reforms they have been resisting so diligently to date.

2. So long as the current system of government, codified by the Afghan Constitution, is in place, no amount of "bottom up" engagement can fix the problem. The reason bottom up engagement is the hot ticket is because we have taken "top down" off the table as an option. Not only can engaging the bottom never work so long as the top is so broken on the Afghan side; so too is engaging the bottom (small t local taliban) like digging at the bottom of a sand dune so long as the top of the Talibans issues (big T Taliban in Pakistan) are intact.

A. We must address these two sanctuaries. The legal handcuffs we place on ourselves in regards to what and how we can engage the Karzai government. If we are unwilling to do that, we should just go home, because to stay under the current arrangement is to make ourselves his stooge; not only protecting and funding his government, but taking on full responsibility for its very existence as well. Also a problem is the legal constraints to our ability to engage AQ in Pakistan. Once we deconflate that threat, separating AQ, their foreign fighters, and Pashtun Taliban into distinct categories, I suspect we can garner Pakistan support to allow a much more direct access to going after the first two so long as we are committed to leaving the last one alone.

B. Geo politics again; a stable Pak-India is far more critical to the US in the long run than a stable Afghanistan. If we error, it should be toward the latter rather than the former. Currently we error in the wrong direction. We are driven by Intel and flawed tactics rather than by strategy and policy. If the US is straight with Iran and Pakistan; then Afghanistan will fall in place. If we cling to some particular US solution in Afghanistan that is at odds with Iran and Pakistan, we put ourselves at strategic risk and commit ourselves to an enduring effort to attempt to force that solution in the face of opposition from both those countries and at least half the Afghan populace.

This is why I argue that the US is not at war in Iraq or Afghanistan. To elevate those interventions to war status forces us to have to "win," and to win or lose in either one is a big problem. By placing those two conflicts into a proper context within our larger peace strategy for the region and the world, we can see more clearly that a messy draw may not only be good enough, but in fact might be the best possible outcome.

But senior leaders can't even get to this conversation, because they think we are at war, so they keep arguing tactics. I'm just wondering who is stepping back and looking at the big picture? Who is providing strategic context?

The Brits criticize the US for our inability to do this very well, and their criticisms are well founded. We cling to the tactical lessons of their colonial experience, and it is largely invalid in today's environment. We ignore the strategic lessons of their colonial experience, and that is what would serve us best.

Too many generals who think like platoon leaders; when what we need are platoon leaders who carry a Field Marshall's baton.

Bob

Apologies for the late clarification/response. It is the next day by the time I get to catch up.

When I refer to Foreign Taliban perhaps I should say foreign insurgency or foreign element. Basically those who are not from Afghanistan and have no tribal or local affiliation at all.

I experienced their direct assault on work I was doing and eye-balled some of them in one or two villages. They did not care one jot for the District, Province or Afghanistan.

Just when we thought we had won over the local Taliban the foreign element would return and bad things happened. You know the story.

A good example of this was covered in March 2010 in the UK Telegraph whose reporter interviewed a so-called reintegrated local Taliban from Helmand: "Abdul was one of a force of around 160 Taliban fighters who fought in the Nad e'Ali and Marjah areas of central Helmand. As well as local Afghans, his unit was composed of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis.."

This foreign element has to be eliminated and cut off from influencing the local Taliban.

When defining local Taliban - I dont mean lower tier cadres. The District Taliban leaders are key to local stability and some form of agreement - if there is no GiROA, or a GiROA presence that is corrupt or invisible, there are not many other alternatives.

I completely agree with you in terms of the "functional sanctuary we have created and protect around the Karzai government in Kabul" and that it is near impossible for a General to rid the place of those rates and mice.

That said, Im always looking for strategic and tactical alternatives and locking in local leaders would make sense in the context of the current environment.

One element below the surface of the Karzai cronies is the younger generation. There is a tier of well educated, savvy Afghans who need to be kept on side, before they are sucked into the corruption/power game. The young leaders that I talk to understand the role they can play and have their sights on correcting the current leadership.

The up and coming youth with a slightly different view of the world should be supported and potential leaders identified across politics, business, community, law & order and international engagement. While this maybe slightly off-piste for our focus on SWJ - it is part of the counter-radicalisation process and long term political and economic stability.

Correct me if I am wrong but I think we agree on the same broad argument. That until the craddle of corruption is removed from GiROA alternative pathways need to be pursued.

Thanks

Jason

Madhu, go ahead and bash the media, I'm sure you
wont' hurt anyone's feelings here :-).

I found it amusing to read Gen. Petraeus morning meeting comments. He never gets stressed by erroneous media reports about his command, he just lets them hang themselves with their own rope as their professional credibility goes down the tubes. Gotta love it.

I feel very strongly that the key method of bringing security back is developing village and tribal Local Defense Forces - like we did in Iraq. I discussed this at length in a previous SWJ blog, so I won't repeat myself here (see this old blog link below).

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/05/a-cia-coindinistas-misgivings/…

Going off on a tangent: RCJ, if we reestablish relations with Iran it should only be for the purpose of "keeping our enemies closer." As far as I'm concerned, we've been at war with Iran since 1979. In what I refer to as the "New Cold War", we have been fighting proxy wars with surrogate forces just like we did with the Soviet Bloc. Iran used the Shiites in Iraq as a surrogate force and they are developing the same capability in Afghanistan for the express purpose of undermining ISAF's efforts.

With regards to affects by neighbors, we must realize that a successful Iraq is bad for Saudi Arabia! Reason: oil. Estimates state Iraq has the second or third most oil reserves in the world. Only about 10% of the country has been surveyed. They simply don't have the means to move it all - yet. Iraq has the potential to become an oil super-power and serious threat to Saud power. So, why would Saudi Arabia really help us stabilize Iraq?

v/r

Todd

RCJ:

I suspect that realistically the first two options you cite are the same. I doubt very much that any reconciliation would hold, or that either party would see it from the start as anything but a tool with which to gain advantage. Given the history and the existing political culture, I don't see any way that these factions are suddenly going to be transformed into constitutional democrats just because we decide to facilitate. They are going to disagree, and they are going to settle their disagreements with violence. It's what they do. They will eventually cease to do that, but we can't make that happen.

Just walking away would have been an excellent idea, but we needed to do it back when big T and little t were disorganized, broken, and on the run and we were the big dog on the block. Walking away when you're on top of the pile delivers a message: we don't want to run your show, but if you mess with us you will feel pain. Walking away when things are messy and the other guys are on the rise delivers a very different message, and it's not likely to make anyone think twice about attacking us in the future.

I honestly don't see any good way out right now: that's what happens when we stay in too long and pursue goals (like governing Afghanistan or determining how Afghanistan will be governed) that we haven't the capacity to achieve. If we stay we chuck money and lives down a black hole. If we leave now it's perceived as defeat. Reconciling the competing parties and leaving them all to share power in a legitimate constitutional framework is a lovely dream, but it's still a dream. Any way out will be messy and unsatisfactory, but at least we can learn the lesson for future reference.

I don't see how the US can "take a neutral role". We are a combatant, we're not neutral and will not be perceived as neutral no matter what we say. A mediator must be perceived as neutral by all parties to mediate effectively, and we can't realistically aspire to that perception. I doubt that anyone could mediate the Taliban and the Karzai crowd into sharing governance, but the US certainly can't do it.

Another thing to consider: if we go into a negotiating process assuming that the outcome will or should be shared governance under an equitable Constitution, we are in fact attempting to dictate the outcome of the process. That's an attempt to impose an American solution. It may be Afghans pretending to do it, but we've decided what the outcome will be before the process has even started. No way around it.

Reconciliation and a functional constitution are American solutions. No way around that either. Would these parties come up with this kind of "solution" on their own? Given that they would surely not, what chance would such an arrangement have for survival, sinc it would have to be imposed from the outside?

They will fight, no matter what we do. Our job is not to leave behind balanced equitable constitutional governance - something we can't do in any event - it is to make sure that all parties to the fight realize that attacking the US or sheltering those who do brings horrible consequences. If we'd kept our eye on that ball from the start we'd be in a better place now.

I agree that the US has been extremely destabilizing to Pakistan in our approach to our real and perceived problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But at the end of the day, America is a half a globe away and has no interest in the defeat of Pakistan or the control of her people or territory. We do have an interest in a stability between Pakistan and India that trumps any interests we have in Afghanistan. All of which is served best by less pressence and manipulations of outcomes than by more of either.

Jason,
You say:

"...the difference between the insurgency in Afghanistan and that of other civil conflicts in Algeria, Vietnam, Malaya and East Timor is that these insurgencies were a momentous struggle to displace a deeply corrupt government or break the shackles of colonialism."

Actually, Afghanistan is exactly like that.

To throw out inacuarte phrases like "foreign Taliban" only serves to muddy the water. Do you mean the foreign fighters from places like Uzbekistan and Germany who come to support AQ's UW efforts? Do not conflate foreign fighters, AQ and the Taliban. They may all fight together, but they do so for vastly different causation, motivation and rationale.

Cheers.

Bob

Todd

Well put.

Kabul and President Karzai are so far removed from the local socio-ecosystem that their negotiations with distant Taliban leaders from Pakistan are unlikely to succeed. The tyranny of distance is not just physical it is also psychological.

Even if I supported the top down negotiation appproach with the big T Taliban the mistake in the current strategic thinking in relation to negotiations is that we continue to come at this from a Western democratic mind set. In an anthropological perspective, and at the risk of being elitist, it is anachronistic. We forget that Western democracy has been developed over a long period of history, numerous revolutions and civil wars that eventually resulted in founding principles cemented in documents such as the Magna Carta, and the Bill of Rights of 1689, which followed the deposing of James II. And of course the oldest written constitution in the world, the United States of Americas Constitution 1787. Citizens in every local town in the United States have had over 220 years to recognise and respect their constitution within a free and open society.

Afghan tribes and villagers experienced democracy for the first time in 2004. Yet, this has not diminished the primacy of local power and authority in resolving disputes and negotiating local issues. It could well be that because the introduction of democracy, constitution and rules of law to Afghanistan was through foreign intervention rather than an organic revolution; it will take even longer to cement a top down deontological approach to the rule of law.

Stepping back for a moment, the obvious difference between the insurgency in Afghanistan and that of other civil conflicts in Algeria, Vietnam, Malaya and East Timor is that these insurgencies were a momentous struggle to displace a deeply corrupt government or break the shackles of colonialism. The motive for the insurgency in Afghanistan is neither of these. The foreign Taliban demand adherence to no ethnicity, no nationality nor necessarily have the same reasons to fight. Some are religiously motivated such as the Madrassah students from across the Pakistan border in the NWFP. Others are "Western home grown" Islamic students or converts to Islam from Europe who are fighting like many of the foreign elements who entered Iraq to join Al Qaeda.

Above all of this is a President who will be working as hard as possible to remain in power post 2014.

D.

It actually gets America out of the "solution" business. It is our current approach that promotes an American solution. Reconciliation shifts us to a neutral position to facilitate an accomodation between the parties. If the Northern Alliance and the Taliban do not achieve such an accomodation, then instability and violence are inevitable. By taking our current "American solution" approach we hinder true stability on Afghan terms in favor of a forced stability on U.S. terms.

If I were to rank the three options, I would put our current approach last.

1. U.S. takes a neutral role and facilitates a reconciliation between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban and the follow-on crafting of a functional constitution. An Afgan solution that represents most Afghans.

2. U.S. deems enough is enough, recognizes that we put greater interests at risk by staying than we do by leaving; and we go home. Violence escalates and one side prevails between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. The prevailing party suppresses the loser and the seeds for the next conflict begin to germinate and grow. An Afghan solution that represents about half of Afghans and suppresses the rest. Opens the door for the next foreign power to come in and conduct UW to support their interests there. If the Taliban prevail, that could well be India or Russia to support the Northern Alliance...

3. the U.S. stays the course, suppresses the Taliban insurgency similar to what Sri Lanka did to the LTTE; declares victory with the Karzai government in place, commit to years of engagement and cost to sustain Karzai's regime as we have so many regimes (currently being challenged by their own populaces across N. Africa and the AP) and keep the seeds of GWOT alive and well among the people in the AFPAK region. As a bonus this solution will also put Pakistan's back against a wall on the Durrand line, and quite likely bring a significant Indian presence into Afghanistan to "assist" the US with our mission there, further destabilizing detente between these nuclear opponents. A US solution that supports half of Afghans at best.

Cheers,

Bob

RCJ:

You already know what I think, but this:

<i>establishing a truce, bringing the Taliban government in excile to the table, and sorting out an accomodation that creates a GIRoA that represents all Afghans. This then would be followed by a comprehensive Loya Jirga to craft a new Constitution.</i>

seems to me to be as unrealistic as it is lovely and desirable. It assumes trust, it assumes good faith, it assumes the will to share and cooperate. Do any of these exist? Of course it is true that "GIRoA has no interest in doing this. They prefer a country in conflict under their control to a contry that is stable at the price of sharing leadership", but is that not also how the Taliban felt when they were in power, and how they will feel when they regain it, which is clearly what they intend to do?

I just can't see how the "issue" motivating the "big T Taliban" is anything but getting back the control that we took from them, and I see no reason at all to think that the parties involved have any interest in playing nicely and sharing power together. I see no reason to believe that we can compel or persuade them to try, except to the extent that they can advance their own agendas by pretending to cooperate.

Given the recent history and the entrenched political culture, is there any realistic chance of these groups cooperating? Certainly it's an ideal solution for us, but why should it be for those who would have to participate?

How is this not an American solution to an Afghan problem?

Todd,

A lot of great points there. I do have a small quibble on the final one. ISAF is very focused on "reintegration" as well, which is essentially defined as bringing a small t taliban home to his village with a formal commitment not to fight anymore and promise loyalty to GIRoA and the current constitution.

I suspect the majority of small t taliban "reintegrate" every winter; and rejoin the fight if it suits them the following spring. I also have a problem with making us making people swear loyalty to the single thing I'd hold up as the greatest cause of insurgency (even more than our presence) in Afghanistan, that F'd up constitution. Plus, once the issues of the insurgency are resolved, reintegration happens naturally. If one has to force, coerce or cajole reintegration, the insurgency causation is not resolved.

So I fall to the minority camp that sees reconciliation as the key. This has been abandoned to GIRoA by ISAF (part of the sanctuary we have crafted for GIRoA) and is much more about addressing the issues driving the Big T Taliban revolution by establishing a truce, bringing the Taliban government in excile to the table, and sorting out an accomodation that creates a GIRoA that represents all Afghans. This then would be followed by a comprehensive Loya Jirga to craft a new Constitution.

GIRoA has no interest in doing this. They prefer a country in conflict under their control to a contry that is stable at the price of sharing leadership. Pakistan would back our play in getting the Taliban to the table, though I think the Taliban would not be a hard sell. So the only "real" obstacle is the false one of the sanctuary we have put GIRoA in, and our own confused perspectives on the nature of the insurgency we face.

Cheers!

Bob

(Oh, then this would free the US to focus on our two primary issues in this region. Stability between Pakistan and India; and re-establishing relations with Iran.)

Robert, you are right on. We use the term "Taliban" far too loosely in Afghanistan just as we used the term "al Qaeda" too loosely in Iraq. Not only is the terminology erroneous, but it subverts the targeting process!

Depending on location, the "Taliban" insurgents present don't give a hoot about GIRoA or establishing a fundamentalist Islamic society. It was the same situation in Iraq. Most of the population in both theaters are very much against a fundamentalist Islamic society and only comply through threat of force.

As Robert said, many - I would say most - insurgents in OIF and OEF reacted to the presence of a foreign force. "Accidental Guerrillas" as David Kilcullen puts it. Who wants some foreign army stomping through your village in the middle of the night "kidnapping" your men? Additionally, being an insurgent often pays well in a defunct economy.

In Iraq, we fought the 1920 Revolution Brigades for years until 2007 when they decided they had enough of Islamic State of Iraq's (aka al Qaeda in Iraq) crap. Then they sided with CF and USSF to fight ISI. They still did not approve of our foreign presence, but our evil was better than ISI's evil.

When they talk about "negotiating with the Taliban", we have to ask exactly WHO are they negotiating with? Is it REALLY the Taliban high command based out of Pakistan and vying to overthrow GIRoA? Or, is this "taliban" simply tribal/village elements seeking to return to peace.

Also, we can't confuse "negotiation" with "reintegration". Reintegration of former insurgents back into normal society is how COIN is won.

v/r

Todd

Little t cares little about who is in Kabul, they have never heard of 9/11, and they often think American troops are Russian.

Big T is a revolutionary movement, and they oppose GIRoA.

I'm not sure why the smart guys conflate them as a single entity, or why we attack the bottom to attempt to affect the top.

Possibly because we study "COIN" that is based in the lessons learned from past Euro/US colonial enterprises, and do not study insurgency itself all that much.

In Afghan tribal society even when engaged in war against another tribe, lines of communication are maintained. We all know that on SWJ - so dont mean to tell anyone to suck eggs. Dialogue between elders from rival tribes is often what resolves disputes, not military defeat. The key to these negotiations is not just that they are a balance of soft and hard power, it is that they occur at the local level or with leaders who are directly connected with the local population, and not just the top-down approach focused with individuals who after years of hiding in Pakistan have little in common with local Taliban.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, from the Brookings Institute makes a number of obvious points in her 2009 paper NEGOTIATIONS AND RECONCILIATION WITH THE TALIBAN: The Key Policy Issues and Dilemmas. Felbab-Brown uses the example, of the Chora district in Uruzgan, a violent region with a strong Taliban presence, where such an effort to sponsor reconciliation and address discrimination has enabled employed. It is local issues, such as the paucity of good governance, the tribally-motivated discrimination, the lack of dispute resolution mechanisms and rule of law, and the corruption of the Afghan police and government officials that have alienated so many from the government, not the division of national power, that is paramount to fewer local men joining the fight.

If the local Taliban agree not to host al-Qaeda or other trans-national terrorist organisations in their local district then what is the difference between them, a warlord or a corrupt Governor, in the context of Afghanistan?

Not surprisingly, the implementation of any peace deal is more difficult than the effort required for signing the peace deal in the first place. In the case of Afghanistan deals and double deals are part of survival. Negotiations have always been at the local level rather than resolving a national crisis.

How many civil wars do we know that resulted in lasting peace? In most cases, combatants chose to walk away from the negotiating table and return to war. In Committing to Peace, Barbara F Walters, points out that civil war combatants almost always chose to return to war unless a third party stepped in to enforce or verify a post-treaty transition. Instances where a third party assisted with implementation, negotiations almost always succeeded, regardless of the initial goals, ideology, or ethnicity of the participants. If a third party did not, these talks almost always failed. Bosnia is a good example, where it took the intervention of the United States and Britain, along with the U.N to not only deliver hard power, bring the a negotiated settlement and then keep that settlement in place. The challenge in the case of Afghanistan is who would be that third party, that is, you need a third party to enforce coercion and at times demonstrate incentives in cooperation.

Not only do we need a better strategy to fight and negotiate at the same time we need to identify if a reliable third party with enough regional clout can be brought into the negotiations to enable them to be successful. What makes Afghanistan more difficult is that these negotiations need to take place at the local level. Most importantly, given our long and costly experience with Warlords and corrupt Governors, a local peace deal with the Taliban may prove just as effective. If the local Taliban can guarantee they will not permit transnational terrorists to remain in their district in return for the international community respecting their right to live their own life. The key question is how to enforce this agreement over the long term.

Local Taliban sure, but Transnational terrorists in Afghanistan?

I doubt one is going to find very many "transnational terrorists" in Afghanistan, unless one counts the Taliban who come over from Pakistan; or the foreign fighters who travel to Pakistan and then into Afghanistan. These are not exports, these are imports.

What is typically called "local Taliban" or "little t taliban" is primarily an apolitical, non-ideological, resistance movement. They fight because a foreign occupier is present (and the northern alliance ANSF is considered nearly as foreign as the Coalition forces are), and they fight often because they get paid an honest wage to do so. Ironically the bulk of our current COIN strategy targets this aspect of the insurgency in a manner that inflames it at the same time.

For many villages, as near Chora, there is little to no GIRoA governance, so the only governing presence is often that sent in from Pakistan by the "Big T Taliban", the much more political revolutionary leadership of the movement that takes sanctuary in Pakistan.

Understanding this dichotomy within the insurgency is far more important than understanding nuances of the tribal aspect of southern Afghanistan (the north is not tribal, but is ethnic and family focused).

Success in Afghanistan is best served by engaging this lower tier of the insurgency among the people LESS, not more. To surge is to inflame, to attack is to kill the sons and fathers of the families of the region; to press foreign aid is to highlight the shortcomings of GIRoA. Our strategy is upside down.

Success comes in developing a smarter campaign for engaging the issues driving the upper tier of this insurgency. This is not really a military mission though, so having a military HQ in overall charge of the operation is a bit of an obstacle to clear thought. It is no wonder the focus is on the lower tier, as there are plenty of military targets to be crafted there.

But we have a big sanctuary problem that prevents the effective engagement of the issues driving the upper tier of the insurgency. No, not the sanctuary created by the sovereign border with Pakistan (though that is a problem); but rather the functional sanctuary we have created and protect around the Karzai government in Kabul. No General is going to feel that it is in his lane to engage a president. Engage insurgents? Definitely, but not a president.

So, the real reconciliation efforts, those that focus on the political issues between the current government and the government in exile in Pakistan go unaddressed. We leave that to Karzai, who mentions it enough to make it look like he is trying, but any reasonable assessment clearly appreciates that it is far more in his interest to sustain the current situation, funded and protected by the Coalition, than to risk the ramifications of seeking a better balance to the governance of this country.

2011 has become 2014, and 2014 will likely become a larger number as well. Just what Mr. Karzai wants. Until we stop arguing tactics and get refocused on the strategic realities we commit ourselves to a role of managing the violence to a degree that keeps the current system in place. Once we are willing to tear down the sanctuary we have built around GIRoA, however, we will be able to begin to make true progress toward a stable solution.