This Week at War: The Taliban Play Let's Make a Deal

Topics include:

1) Can Obama and Mullah Omar sign a truce?

2) The CIA's secret Afghan army ---- a model for the future?

Can Obama and Mullah Omar sign a truce?

On Oct. 6, the Washington Post reported that Taliban representatives and the Afghan government have begun negotiations on how to end the war. The Post's sources emphasized that actual bargaining between the two sides has yet to begin. Further, only the Quetta Shura branch of the Taliban, led by Mullah Mohammad Omar and based in Baluchistan, is participating. The Haqqani network, located in Pakistan's North Waziristan and thought to have extensive ties with al Qaeda, is not involved. Given U.S. President Barack Obama's well-known eagerness to wind down the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, the prospect of a negotiated settlement must be appealing. The questions now become, what settlement will the United States tolerate and what will be the longer term implications of a truce?

According to article, the Quetta Shura is now "very, very serious about finding a way out" of the war. Why? The article suggests that the Shura's leadership fears that it is losing control of its organization. Mullah Omar and his lieutenants now supposedly fear that "radical elements" -- presumably battlefield replacements -- are taking over the bottom rungs and will someday threaten the top leadership. Under this theory, the Quetta Shura would prefer a truce that would allow it a chance to sort out its internal challenges.

This description of Mullah Omar's motivation for a truce sounds speculative. Of more importance are the Pakistan government's incentives for signing off on the deal. Indeed, the article discusses Pakistan's desire to maintain firm control over any negotiations. An August New York Times article described how the Pakistani government deliberately scuttled a Taliban negotiation effort last January that was bypassing Islamabad. According to that piece, Pakistani officials were in no mood to a permit a negotiation that did not include Pakistan's interests.

The Post piece does not have much else to say about Pakistan's participation in this new effort. According to the Wall Street Journal, a recent Obama administration report to Congress notes that Pakistan's security forces are avoiding action against al Qaeda or its Haqqani supporters and that Pakistan's intelligence service is encouraging the Afghan Taliban to step up their attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The status quo -- low-level open-ended war in Afghanistan -- has been a tremendous windfall for Pakistan. It has allowed the country to emerge from political isolation and to receive a previously unimaginable bounty of gifts from the United States. And the further the United States has ramped up its campaign in Afghanistan, the more dependent it has become on Pakistan, resulting in more U.S. gift-giving. Pakistan's leaders would seem to have little incentive to upset this arrangement.

Could Pakistan change its calculation? Its leaders might soon conclude that Obama administration officials have reached the end of their patience with Pakistan's duplicity. Formerly private U.S. criticism of Pakistan's behavior has now gone public. And U.S. policymakers are now displaying their impatience with orders for sharply increased Predator drone strikes inside Pakistan. Rather than push their luck and risk a dramatic breakup with Washington, Pakistan's leaders may opt to lock in some gains with a truce that would legitimize the status of its Taliban allies in southwest Afghanistan.

How eager is the Obama team for a truce? According to the Washington Post article, the Obama and Karzai governments want the Quetta Shura Taliban to publicly reject al Qaeda, recognize the Afghan government, and give up their weapons. Obama must realize that any Taliban promises on these conditions are unenforceable. But these concessions would provide enough face-saving cover for a settlement. A truce will only be a temporary pause in Afghanistan's seemingly endless war, but Obama will undoubtedly welcome any chance to deescalate the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and reset his strategy, even if it means making a deal with Mullah Omar.

The CIA's secret Afghan army -- a model for the future?

Perhaps the most interesting revelation in Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward's new book on the Obama administration's Afghan war deliberations, is the disclosure of the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. These teams are a 3,000-man Afghan paramilitary force organized by the CIA to conduct a variety of covert operations inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to an anonymous U.S. official quoted by the Washington Post, the teams are "one of the best Afghan fighting forces," and have made "major contributions to stability and security." What remains to be demonstrated is whether such elite but necessarily small forces can have a meaningful strategic impact on the wider war.

The CIA's motivation for organizing covert paramilitary teams of Afghans is straightforward. There are critical intelligence-gathering tasks that only indigenous operatives can accomplish. First is the infiltration of local Taliban cells and perhaps higher reaches in the Taliban's chain of command. Second is persistent strategic reconnaissance, especially inside cities and villages where Afghans could best maintain cover. Third is the employment of undercover Afghan paramilitary teams for raids on Taliban targets inside Afghanistan. Fourth is cross-border infiltration and reconnaissance in Pakistan's tribal areas, establishing agent relationships and identifying targets for Predator drone attacks. According to Woodward, the CIA's Afghan teams are performing all of these missions.

Although the CIA's paramilitary Afghans may be achieving impressive tactical successes, they have yet to register a decisive strategic effect. That strategic effect may yet arrive as the teams achieve further attrition against the Taliban's networks. The best indication of decisive strategic effect would be the Taliban's agreement to a settlement on terms agreeable to the Afghan and U.S. governments. Although that process may be starting, such a conclusion seems far away.

According to Obama's Wars, Vice President Joe Biden saw a major role for the Afghan paramilitary teams under his "counterterrorism plus" approach, which President Obama later declined to select. In Biden's view, Afghanistan was a long-term maintenance problem, not a war that would have a resolution, and the paramilitary Afghan teams, supported by U.S. special operators, air power, and human intelligence sources, would be adequate to prevent al Qaeda from reestablishing a presence inside Afghanistan. The United States would be able to sustain such a small and inexpensive footprint indefinitely, and will in any case have to maintain such a structure whether or not a political settlement ever occurs.

As I have mentioned previously, United States policymakers in the future will want options other than large counterinsurgency stabilization campaigns to address insurgent and terror threats. The lessons learned from the secretive Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams will no doubt be part of the future policy toolbox.