The International Crisis Group has published a new report on the state of peace and reconciliation efforts on the issue of conflict in Afghanistan. The report is a devastating critique of the efforts by the government of Afghanistan and the peace council constituted by it to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan. The report paints a grim picture of the efforts and foresees a troubled future for what it has called talks about talks.
The International Crisis Group's report is a particularly welcome addition to the thick literature on the status of the government of Afghanistan's efforts towards finding a political settlement. It is welcome since it throws a new light and has some particularly blunt observations. Under the present circumstances, it would help to break the ice and place the critical perspective on the peace efforts in the mainstream.
The health and integrity of the peace efforts led by the government of Afghanistan is indeed in a bad shape. The government of Afghanistan and the peace council created by President Karzai have miserably failed to achieve any progress in the task of opening paths of negotiation with the government of Afghanistan.
As the ICG's report clearly spells out a vision of reforming and undertaking a paradigm shift in Afghanistan's peace project, the need has become insurmountable now to go the route of reforms and a grand paradigm shift or the process will be condemned to failure. As I have maintained earlier, it has long become a matter of now or never. The government of Afghanistan must put its act together if it is going to give the failed peace process any semblance of having a chance of success.
Perhaps, the greatest vulnerability of the peace efforts on the Afghanistan conflict is the fragmentation and the piece-meal nature of the efforts. Right now, the efforts are being pursued on multiple fronts and by various actors. The government of Afghanistan has been one such actor. The other has been the United States that has largely tried to maintain a grip on its own track of efforts with little to show so far.
Other actors are as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other countries that have tried to make an intervention. In all the hubbub of confusion and the smoke and mirror of the peace-making enterprise in Afghanistan, the outcome has actually been ignored and the participants have instead focused on working towards their own motives and realizing their interests. The case of the United States stands out as a tall example.
The exclusive nature of the process being pursued by the United States and the fact that the U.S. has tried hard to exclude even Pakistan from the process all point towards the gravity of the situation. The U.S. has been unsuccessful in its attempts to rope in the Taliban. As proclaimed by the Taliban, the talks about talks between the U.S. and the Taliban have stalled for now partly owing to the conditions and pre-conditions that the two sides had maintained.
The future of the talks with Taliban looks bleak as far as the efforts by the U.S. and its western allies are concerned. The West's efforts for finding a political settlement in Afghanistan looks bleak and the West too needs to rethink its approach to the enterprise of peace-making in Afghanistan.
There can be no escaping the need to put up a brave resistance against the Taliban and the broader insurgency even if the necessary conditions for a final settlement of the conflict cannot be brought about in the short run as discussed. Therefore, keeping in view the transition period in front of Afghanistan culminating in the 2014 withdrawal of most of the foreign troops, a new overall strategy in dealing with Taliban and the broader insurgency must be devised and set in place. It is clear that the military strategies alone cannot provide the long-sought panacea; hence civilian and developmental efforts must be reinvigorated and pursued with a renewed zeal.
It is important to also defeat the Taliban morally - that is on the same turf that they claim their righteous insurgency comes from. The current democratic political set-up in the country must be further strengthened with the effect that the government of Afghanistan can deliver on the welfare and developmental needs of the country and the nation. The government of Afghanistan must put its house in order by fighting corruption, dispersing justice, preserving the rule of law and bringing economic and political development.
It is only with the narrative of development and prosperity that we would be able to defeat the Taliban's narrative of war, destruction, violence and misery. In other words, building further on the gains made over the past ten years and making the current system a viable alternative to what Taliban have on offer is an imperative that Afghanistan and its foreign partners cannot afford to disregard. It is perfectly possible that if Afghanistan can sustain and speed up its journey on the path to greater prosperity and development, incentives will reduce on the part of all the conflict's drivers to continue with the insurgency and violence.
In other words, Afghanistan has an option of developing itself out of the current state of morass and stalemate, although it might prove to be messy and difficult. This, in turn, would require unwavering, long-term support of the international community to help Afghanistan gradually regain its vitality lost during decades of incessant conflict.
Challenges are many in the way to achieving such a vision of Afghanistan. The greatest is the continued disjuncture in Afghanistan's politics and the failure of the government to put up a satisfactory performance. The saga of the Parliamentary elections and the subsequent electoral crisis that is still far from over, placed on display the depth of the problems that Afghanistan continues to grapple with.
it is true that positive change and transformation takes place gradually and in bits; but Afghanistan's very slow to move towards crafting a functioning state puts question marks over the ability and the willingness of the current government to guide the system towards greater maturity and consolidation. What is certain is that it is Afghanistan government's performance that will prove to be the most important arbiter of whether or not Afghanistan will achieve durable peace.