Making Peace with the Taliban Theo Farrell and Michael Semple Theo Farrell is Professor of War in the Modern World and Head of the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Michael Semple is Visiting Research Professor in the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justics at Queen’s University Belfast. We are grateful to Antonio Giustozzi, Ed Hadley, Chris Kolenda, Carter Malkasian and Jonathan Schroden for their helpful comments, and to the UK Economic and Social Research Council for funding this research (Grant ES/L008041/1). Note: this is an unedited version of a paper forthcoming in Survival (2016). On 28 September 2015, the northern Afghan city of Kunduz fell to the Taliban. Some 5,000 Afghan soldiers, police and militia were protecting Kunduz, but these quickly retreated as hundreds of Taliban swept into the city to join up with insurgents who had infiltrated beforehand. This was a hard won victory for the Taliban. Pouring fighters into the north, they had by degrees taken increasingly control of the districts around Kunduz city over the past two years, even compromising on their usual austere rule in order win over local support. The Afghan government vowed to quickly retake Kunduz, but the army had to fight through Taliban held territory surrounding the city. Supported by US airstrikes and special forces, Afghan commandos began to clear the Taliban out of the city on 1 October. It took two weeks to achieve this. In seizing Kundaz, the Taliban achieved a key stated objective of their 2015 campaign, which was to capture a provincial capital. Appearing before the Senate
Armed Services Committee a few days afterwards, the commander of coalition forces, General John Campbell, ‘absolutely’ agreed with Senator John McCain when he observed that ‘from a PR standpoint, it was a rather significant victory for the Taliban.’ But however significant or spectacular it was, this victory does not alter the strategic reality of the war, which is one of stalemate. As we show below, neither side can win militarily. The Afghan army and police have no hope of wiping out the insurgency. Equally, the Taliban cannot win back Afghanistan through force of arms alone. This creates a simple and compelling logic for peace talks as the only way to end the conflict. The past decade has seen a number of initiatives by the Afghan government to reach out to the Taliban. Most were designed to co-opt Taliban commanders or persuade Taliban fighters to abandon their military campaign, rather than coherent and genuine attempts to negotiate peace. For their part, the Taliban have focused since 2006 on sustaining their military campaign in the face of growing western intervention. Nonetheless, the past five years have seen a discernible shift in Taliban strategy from one focused solely on fighting to include a diplomatic track. Thus the Taliban agreed to open a political office in Qatar, participated in occasional track-two events, engaged with a handful of governments, and participated in a sustained humanitarian dialogue. However, progress on peace talks was stymied by the Taliban refusal to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose intent they distrusted, and who they considered a mere ‘puppet of the Americans.’ The election of Ashraf Ghani as Afghan President in September 2014 has provided the opportunity to push forward with peace talks. At a time when many Taliban might be mistaken about the possibility of military victory, this article examines what can be done to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table and to keep them there.
participate in one of the peace making processes. Whereas, the military group are against the political group and think that the only way to progress is through fighting. Another senior Taliban leader told us that ‘a lot of military commanders believe that there is no difference between the Afghan government and members of the Taliban Political Commission.’ A different Taliban leader took a more balanced view, recognising that there were differences of opinion among military commanders – some think that the Political Commission misrepresent the Taliban and distract it from fighting, while others recognize the virtue of the Political Commission in developing ‘very good relation[s] with the international community.’ The Taliban doctrine of obedience to the leader has more practical implications in that it has been a key factor in protecting the movement from fragmentation. The Taliban Movement was unique among major Afghan forces in that it survived two decades without experiencing any significant split. Furthermore there is a recognisable command chain stretching from the Pakistan-based leadership to each district of Afghanistan. The movement's cohesiveness both defines the way it makes war and suggests how it could make peace. The fact that the Taliban have a cohesive national structure means that it is meaningful to talk of a national level military campaign, with coherent objectives and a strategy, on a scale which represents a credible threat to the Afghan state. The fact that there is an empowered leadership means that potentially, should that leadership decide to shift to a strategy that places more emphasis on peace talks, it could credibly represent the whole of the movement and, with due efforts to maintain the confidence of the military, even move towards a ceasefire. In short, the Taliban leadership could make good on a peace agreement.