Negotiating With the Taliban and Suspected War Criminals

From afar, it appears rather obvious that a democratic government of unity and reconciliation would rise in Afghanistan without the inclusion of enemies of its core values, namely irreconcilable opponents of democracy, women, or ethnic rivals.

Indeed, the NATO-backed Karzai Administration has faced a great deal of pressure to exclude loyalists who are under investigation or indictment for war crimes, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda. Anyone with a heart would dream of a government without people who purposely target civilians, call for murder and kidnapping, or kill with impunity and for personal gain.

However, recent considerations by the Obama Administration have Karzai and NATO reconsidering negotiating with the opposition in some cases. Mark Landler and Helene Cooper write on the topic in today's New York Times.

Human rights are sacred, but there are paradoxes. Perhaps prohibiting or removing suspected war criminals from government posts would not only empty those spots but turn tens of thousands of their backers against the government? Or perhaps many Taliban fighters continue to fight specifically because they see that they will be prohibited from participating in or being listened to in the future democratic government?

Clarity illuminates that these negotiations are very complex. There are very serious demands for protecting people threatened by war violence, and yet many of those participating in the violence are not necessarily doing it irrationally. As Muhammad Sabir Siddiqi clarified for me at the Afghan NGO conference in London yesterday, there are many segmented sections of opponents to the Karzai regime and peace on its terms.

There are extremists opposed to liberal values, period, and they include not only the extreme wing of the Taliban but also their Al Qaeda allies who probably wouldn't participate in a government even if they received an offer of amnesty. However, there are insurgents under the "Taliban" label who fight due to personal grievances, economic reasons, or because they oppose a certain tribe which has unfair advantages in a government sector.

The human rights community reminds the Obama and Brown Administrations with exclamation points about the millions who have suffered because of suspected war criminals and the extremist opposition. For example, Ashley Jackson, Oxfam's policy head in Kabul, wrote this review of the costs of war. In Afghanistan, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) released this statement, addressed to the participants in the London Conference on Afghanistan, calling for, among other things, the leadership to adhere strictly to the vital justice pact in the 2005 Peace, Reconciliation and Justice Plan.

The Karzai Administration and NATO are choosing carefully how to woo many insurgents away from fighting, to keep those in power who wield tremendous loyalty among the population, and at the same time to pursue justice cases against those who have committed crimes or persist in waging violence beyond self-defense.

Nevertheless, the challenge leads into a cul de sac. Let us presume that there are 100,000 men so radically and irreconcilably opposed to the Karzai government and NATO that not only would Karzai not give them amnesty, but they wouldn't ask for it. What is to happen to this group?

One hundred thousand, or perhaps even only 10,000 men, unyielding in their opposition with nowhere to go unless they fight. Some would say they should be hunted down and arrested, if not killed. But it would be impossible to collect that many.

Others might say they should be isolated and ignored, left to exist like hermits, former Nazis, or the Ku Klux Klan. But they will likely be too powerful to simply fade away even if they lost the war.

So what do democracy and human rights advocates who oppose these hardliners' participation in government or negotiations propose for dealing with this ultimate trap?

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Post-script:

Today at the Parliament event in London (1/28/2010), I asked the former Afghan interior minister (Ali Jalali) what he thought about this question. He sees that this core group that will only fight can only be isolated and contained, not reintegrated or dissolved.

My suspicion is that NATO may help Kabul consolidate most of the country, but ultimately it will not be a "win" but rather a decade's long situation like Colombia's FARC (poorly contained de facto autonomous zone) or worse like Uganda's LRA (poorly contained spilling far beyond the neighboring country into five neighboring countries). Sadly, at least that's better than them re-establishing power over the country.

Photo credit: Daweiding (Kunar Province, Afghanistan)