Moscow talks
In an extraordinary gathering
of Afghan politicians in Moscow, including some of President Ashraf Ghani’s
political rivals, talks took place on February 5-6, 2019 with the Taliban on
the way forward in the war torn country. The Taliban came to the table armed
with a charm offensive, including a call for a new, inclusive Islamic
Constitution, no Taliban monopoly on power, stamping out poppy cultivation,
preventing civilian casualties and relaxation of some of the stringent
restrictions on women during their 1996-2001 stint in power. These negotiating
positions of the Taliban speak to the most serious reservations in the minds of
the Afghan people regarding the return, partially or wholly, of the Taliban to
power. However, sweet sounding as these positions are relatively, there are
still lingering doubts about what the Taliban might wreak once back in a
position to impose their narrow, intolerant agenda on the country. The Moscow
moot was organised by the Afghan diaspora, but it is obvious it could not have
been held in Moscow without the concurrence of the Russian authorities. While Ghani’s
rivals, including former president Hamid Karzai, supped, prayed and chatted
with their Taliban counterparts and even some Afghan women representatives got
to have their say, the elephant in the room was the missing Afghan government. This
absence followed the script of the recent US-Taliban talks in Doha where the
Ghani government was again conspicuous by its absence. Although Washington
continues to pay lip service to the Afghan government’s indispensable role in
any settlement, in practice the refusal of the Taliban to talk to the Afghan
government they deride as a US puppet seems for the moment at least to have
been tacitly conceded by the US negotiating side. This in turn has angered an
increasingly beleaguered looking President Ashraf Ghani, who has pooh poohed
the Moscow moot as irrelevant. Nevertheless the moot saw the Afghan rivals of
Ghani demand an interim government to facilitate the negotiated peace process.
This possibility erodes Ghani’s legitimacy and poses serious questions about
the forthcoming presidential elections scheduled for July 2019, which may, if
the demand gathers momentum, sideline Ashraf Ghani completely.
While these inter-Afghan
political intricacies play out and the looming dark shadows over President
Ashraf Ghani’s future gather, there are other, even more pressing concerns that
still roil most informed minds. Although the main concern of Washington that
Afghan territory never again be allowed to be used to attack the US or any of
its allies has been agreed to by the Taliban, serious concerns about the
timeframe, conditions attending, and mechanisms to oversee and implement
whatever agreements finally emerge from the talks process have not been
satisfactorily answered. With hindsight, the received wisdom today is that the
US should never have blundered into an unwinnable war despite its overwhelming
military strength. The old guerrilla warfare maxim seems to have been
overlooked by Washington: the guerrillas win if they do not lose; the other
side loses if it does not win. This maxim underlines the protracted,
asymmetrical nature of guerrilla war, which cannot defeat the vastly superior
enemy, the US in this case, but can over time sap its will to continue a
seemingly endless conflict. Observers of the Afghan scene fear a fiercer civil
war once the US and NATO forces leave, with its concomitant possibilities of a
fresh refugee outflow and the devastating results of shrinking aid for
Afghanistan. In case anyone thinks these concerns are exaggerated, it is
sufficient to point to Taliban attacks in Kunduz and Baghlan provinces while
the Moscow parleys were on to underline the Taliban strategy of talking while
fighting and inflicting what have been termed unsustainable casualties daily on
government forces. A sign of the shifting sands can be found in Iran, Russia,
China and the countries of the region reassessing their positions vis-à-vis the
Taliban, poised as they may be on the brink of returning to power in one form
or another. While hesitant to sound the death knell prematurely, the trends
show a definite tilt towards the unravelling of the US project in Afghanistan,
with some predictable and perhaps some unforeseen consequences still to come.
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