In the third part of her series from Afghanistan, MARY FITZGERALDreports on the attempts to reach out to bring the insurgents, particularly the Taliban, in from the political wilderness
THREE MONTHS ago Maulavi Fazlullah was a wanted man.
Slightly built, with sharp cheekbones and an intense gaze, Fazlullah had served as a Taliban district governor and frontline commander by the age of 34. But doubts began to creep in, he says, during the time he spent with fellow Afghan Taliban in their hideaways over the border in Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas.
“I realised we cannot fix the problems of this country with war,” he says now, just weeks after he decided to leave the insurgency. “I started asking myself what was the benefit of destroying schools and bridges. It only destroys our children’s education and the future of our country.”
Fazlullah sits in the Kabul offices of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission, an Afghan government agency which claims to have drawn thousands away from the insurgency since it was founded in 2005. In April alone, more than 100 fighters signed up to the commission’s programmes which seek to win over insurgents with money and promises of jobs and land, though tellingly none of the defectors came from Helmand or the other southern and eastern provinces where the Taliban’s grip is strongest.
Accompanying Fazlullah is Ustaz Farooq, known as Khalifa in his days as a leading military commander with the Taliban, and before that during the war against the Soviets. Farooq now works as an adviser to the head of the commission, and his credentials make his arguments to the newly arrived all the more persuasive.
“I am still a Talib. I support their ideas. They brought peace in 1996. The Taliban are sons of this country,” he says. “But the fighting that is taking place right now is not the answer.”
Farooq complains about “foreign interference” in Afghanistan and says he deplores the use of what he describes as “imported” tactics such as suicide bombings, kidnapping and beheading.
“These have nothing to do with the culture of our country,” he says, shaking his head. “It comes from outside.”
It is stories like those of Maulavi Fazlullah and Ustaz Farooq that have given impetus to the notion, supported by the Obama administration as part of its strategy for the region, that the majority of those involved in the insurgency in Afghanistan could be lured away from violence and towards some sort of political engagement.
“You don’t have to be a hugely dedicated student of military history to know that any revolutionary war in the end . . . involves a measure of political reconciliation. My guess is that this one will be no different,” says Lieut-Gen Jim Dutton, deputy commander of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).
At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently, Said Jawad, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington, spoke of three distinct groupings within the Taliban, each of which requires a different type of engagement.
The first are the ideological hardcore associated with al-Qaeda – “the Taliban with a capital T” who are utterly irreconcilable and can only be dealt with militarily. The second are mercenaries or “rent-a-Talib” who can be easily bought off. The third group, considered the largest, consists of “paycheck Taliban” – the foot soldiers who sign up “out of desperation” as US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has put it, due to poverty or coercion.
The latter should be approached with offers of “jobs, education and hope,” the ambassador added. But, Jawad warned, now is not the time to open talks with a resurgent Taliban emboldened by the vast swathes of territory it now controls.
“Negotiating with the Taliban will only succeed if you talk to them from the position of strength. As long as the Taliban perceive that they are successful, there is no need for them to talk to any of us,” he said.
Tentative talks with Taliban intermediaries and former officials, involving the Afghan government, Saudi Arabia and other actors have already taken place, however, with one meeting in Mecca last year interpreted as the start of efforts to find a negotiated solution to the raging insurgency.
US officials have given cautious backing to the talks, provided al-Qaeda is not involved and the Taliban agree to respect the Afghan constitution. For their part, the Taliban insist on a complete withdrawal of foreign troops before they assent to negotiations proper. An appeal by Afghan president Hamid Karzai to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, asking him to return home from exile in Pakistan and talk, has been rejected outright.
Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, a foreign minister in the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, attended the Mecca talks but admits little ground has been made.
“There is a big distance between the two sides and no reliability or trust,” he says, sitting in his heavily guarded Kabul home. “Both sides are demanding terms and conditions in advance but this is not practical. They should first come to the table.
“Our people have suffered a lot over the past 30 years. They have seen the misery of war and now they deserve peace, stability and prosperity. The solution to the current conflict can only be through negotiation.”
While insisting he does not speak directly for the Taliban, Mutawakil claims that its agenda is often misunderstood, and he believes that dividing the movement into “so-called moderate and radical or extremist” categories is not useful.
“The Taliban want two things – the independence of Afghanistan and the implementation of sharia in the country,” he explains. “Their agenda is domestic while al-Qaeda’s is global. It is not fair to put the Taliban in the same box as al-Qaeda.”
Mutawakil, who is often described as a moderate, also opposes the use of tactics such as suicide bombings and describes many of those who make up the current Taliban as “young and emotional” men who, through access to technology, have been influenced by insurgencies elsewhere such as the Middle East.
For all the talk in Washington and other capitals of reaching out to elements within the Taliban and engaging them in some sort of political process, the possible outcomes to such a strategy remain unclear. One scenario might involve the Taliban setting up a political party and participating in elections, or being granted a measure of self-government in their strongholds. Another might involve the establishment of an “acceptable dictatorship” as British envoy Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles mused in a leaked memo last October.
The question of who you talk to when you want to talk to the Taliban also presents a considerable conundrum. The movement is not the same austere and disciplined one which governed Afghanistan in the late 1990s.
Instead, it is now a far more fluid and loosely organised entity, which finds itself increasingly factionalised along leadership and geographical lines. And when it comes to the broader insurgency, the Taliban is but one, albeit dominant, element. Criminal gangs and drug traffickers with their own agendas have complicated the mix, as have a host of other militant groups operating from inside and outside Afghanistan, including al-Qaeda.
The complex nature of the insurgency means there are many who would like to see the reconciliation process fail, explains Prof Mohammad Akram, deputy director of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission. His staff receive numerous death threats, and one was recently targeted in a suicide bombing.
“We are a major challenge to these people,” he says. “But we will not be intimidated.”
This series was supported with a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund run by Irish Aid
“It is stories like those of Maulavi Fazlullah and Ustaz Farooq that have given impetus to the notion, supported by the Obama administration, that the majority of those involved in the Afghan insurgency could be lured away from violence