By Michael Rubin

While American diplomats continue to spin U.S.-Taliban talks as aiming for a peace deal, Afghans are more realistic: They see Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s diplomatic process as aiming not at peace but rather just providing cover for a pre-determined U.S. decision to withdraw its forces. At issue is not only U.S. forces in the country. NATO partners with whom I spoke in recent days said that if the United States continues with precipitous, unilateral cuts, they will end their missions rather than cut their own small contingents proportionately.

While non-Taliban Afghans generally welcome foreign troops to assist the Afghan National Security Forces, there is a widespread belief among Afghans (even among liberals) that if the U.S. policy is to betray everything built post-2001, then U.S. forces should simply leave. Conspiracy theories abound that the U.S. is now working in cahoots with the Taliban (otherwise, Afghans say, Trump administration policy makes no sense), because Khalilzad's actions are only sowing division.

At issue is the nature of the Taliban. The radical religious group continues to claim legitimacy in the name of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and refuses to ascribe any validity to the 2004 constitution or Afghanistan’s elected government. As the Taliban have continued targeting schools, markets, and other civilian targets, they have shown no sign of abandoning their previous attitudes or tactics that characterized their philosophy and rule in the run-up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

That said, Afghans understand the inevitability of dialogue. U.S. pressure for talks with the Taliban dates to before President Trump. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton advocated dialogue with the Taliban. “You don’t make peace with your friends,” she said, adding, “You have to be willing to engage with your enemies if you expect to create a situation that ends an insurgency.” And, the loya jirgas — meetings of elders and stakeholders to discuss matters and reach consensus — are ingrained deep in Afghan culture.

Where the White House and State Department go wrong, however, is by encouraging the wrong kind of dialogue. They make meetings with the Taliban in Doha the centerpiece of their strategy. Khalilzad has consistently cut Afghan officials out of talks, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has even blacklisted Afghanistan’s National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib for raising objections. The deliberate humiliation of Mohib and former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh simply encourage Taliban rejectionism of the broader Afghan political spectrum.

Now, with U.S. diplomacy and power in retreat by design, other powers are filling the vacuum. Next week, Taliban and Afghan leaders will head to Beijing for several days of talks. Moscow is also holding another set of intra-Afghan talks. Neither of these will be successful, but both open the door to Russian and Chinese influence in shaping the post-U.S. order.

There is another way, as Davood Moradian, the head of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies, points out. Closing the Herat Security Dialogue on Oct. 19, he argued the time is now for intra-Afghan talks to occur inside Afghanistan. Herat is perhaps Afghanistan’s most cultural city. It is a city of music, poetry, and tolerance — basically, the opposite of everything the Taliban stand for. Yet, as Americans, Iranians, and Pakistanis as well as Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Hindus flew into Herat for the Security Dialogue, so too did Mutasim Agha Jan, the late Taliban leader Mulla Omar’s treasurer and son-in-law, and member of the Quetta Shura. Most participants vehemently disagreed with Agha Jan, but they respected him, talked with him, and drank tea with him. As important, he and other Afghans of like mind also came, despite the presence of Afghan officials in the room. (No American diplomats came from Kabul, a sign of how counterproductive some embassy security restrictions have become).

For Trump, one of the major reasons to retreat from Afghanistan is the cost of continued operations — easily $30 billion per year, even at the current reduced levels. But, encouraging a dialogue inside Afghanistan would cost little to nothing. It might deny the ambitious Khalilzad a central seat at the central podium and the mechanism to shore up his diplomatic credentials and business contacts, but it would provide a path to a more solid diplomatic outcome for Afghanistan, one that does not hand the country to the Taliban, Pakistan, China, or Russia on a silver platter.

The article was first published in Washington Examiner on October 25, 2019.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.

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