Afghanistan’s Elusive Peace
The announcement two weeks ago that Mullah Mohammed Omar – the one-eyed long-time leader of the Taliban – died two years ago in a Karachi hospital seems likely to complicate America’s role in Afghanistan.
Omar went underground in 2001 and fled to Pakistan. With a $10 million bounty on his head and U.S. drones buzzing 24/7 over his reputed hideout in Pakistan, he had not appeared in public since his escape. But he issued twice-yearly statements exhorting his followers to continue their "Jihad" against the "infidels" and to maintain their efforts to overthrow the Kabul "puppet regime."
Then, on July 17, Omar’s statement took U.S. policymakers off guard by endorsing direct peace negotiations with the Afghan government. There had been on-again, off-again contacts for years between the Kabul government and officials claiming to speak for the Taliban, but the July statement seemed to be from the Taliban leader himself.
The U.S. welcomed this apparent Taliban policy shift as it opened the way for the newly elected Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah to pursue a new strategy that fit with the Obama administration’s plans. President Ghani announced that his government would seek Pakistan’s help in pursuing a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. That approach represented a major change from former-President Karzai’s long-running refusal to use Pakistan as an intermediary. Ghani’s new strategy calls for turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s support for the Taliban and in return Pakistan would broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.
Ghani’s approach was not popular with the warlords who make up much of his base, many of whom still dream of eliminating the hated Taliban now, while U.S. forces are still supporting Kabul’s army. But Ghani’s initiative was well received in Islamabad, as it coincided with a decision by Pakistan’s leadership (including the powerful ISI intelligence service) to reel in Pakistani Taliban factions that had staged a series of attacks on Pakistani troops and civilians.
This new Afghan-Pakistan peace initiative also pleased Washington. Despite a continued U.S. presence of 10,000 troops, the Taliban have been scoring increasing battlefield successes against Afghan forces. The Taliban’s "spring offensive" is proving to be its most violent and successful in many years. Indeed, according to the UN mission in Afghanistan, fighting and casualties in Afghanistan have risen sharply. The Afghan Interior Minister judges eleven of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces as facing "high security threats" and another nine as "medium" threats.
But when it became clear that Taliban willingness to join in negotiations could not have come from Mullah Omar himself (now officially dead), it seems this Taliban peace initiative may have been driven not by any real desire to end the conflict but by the realization among Omar’s successors that control over the organization and their negotiating leverage was peaking and would soon decline.
Omar’s replacement, Mullah Mansour, faces major challenges in retaining Omar’s mantle of authority, which derived from his unique status in Pashtun society. Omar was known as "Amir al-Mu’minin" ("Commander of the Faithful"), a title that linked Omar directly to the Prophet Mohammed and even allowed him to wear a robe reputed to have once been worn by The Prophet himself. Without Omar’s legitimacy, the Taliban is in a race against time to keep itself whole.
To do this, Mullah Mansour was compelled to appoint as second-in-command, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the murderous "Haqqani Network," a group that controls much of eastern Afghanistan and has probably killed more Americans than any other Taliban-affiliated faction. When not attacking, the Haqqani Network concentrates on controlling border crossing trails used for smuggling emeralds, hardwood timber and opium out, and weapons in.
With Omar’s death confirmed, the Haqqani Network now has gained a much stronger hand in controlling Taliban policy, knowing that the new ruling Taliban leadership is desperate to keep the Haqqani organization’s fighting forces onside. To complicate the Taliban’s problems, the new Taliban leader must also meet a new challenge from the so-called "Islamic State," or ISIS.
Surprising as it may be, ISIS has suddenly emerged in Afghanistan. The dynamism and success of ISIS has begun to attract younger Jihadis who have tired of the geriatric Taliban leadership’s more conventional approach to insurgency. ISIS is offering something new after decades of stalemate. Mullah Mansour must quickly dispel the notion that the Taliban coalition is falling apart. Already, one important faction in northeastern Afghanistan has defected and declared allegiance to ISIS.
With the secret of Omar’s death now out, we and our allies face the dismal prospect of the Taliban splintering apart, with some factions committed to continuing their money-making drug, smuggling and extortion activities and others seeking to embrace the ISIS brand of Islamic rule. The prospects of a negotiated settlement of the conflict seem more distant than ever as neither group seems to be interested in any imaginable settlement.
Already, the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, has cautioned that the President’s end-of-2016 troop withdrawal plan may not be feasible and ought to be "conditions based." Although that statement has not yet been endorsed by the White House, the Afghan president has welcomed this major deviation from the President’s roadmap and called for an enduring, long-term U.S. presence that would turn Afghanistan into "a South Asia hub, not just focused on Afghanistan, but on the kinds of threats that exist elsewhere in the region."
Sadly, no matter how complicated, dangerous and open-ended America’s war in Afghanistan may become, it appears we have not yet seen the light at the end of this tunnel. They don’t call it "the graveyard of empires" for no reason.
Jack Segal made 40 trips to Afghanistan from 2002–2010 as Chief Political Adviser to the NATO Operational Commander and served on the NATO Commander’s Strategic Advisory Team from 2010-2012. Segal is starting a new NMC extended education series on U.S. foreign policy in September. He and his wife, Karen Puschel, co-chair NMC’s International Affairs Forum which reconvenes on September 17.
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