Afghan Peace Talks as an Opportunity for Governance Reform

For the past four years, reports of talks between representatives of various Afghan insurgent factions and various Afghan government officials have been whispered among experts and insiders, but the volume of such reports has grown rapidly in the media over the past year. Confirmation that exploratory talks had been taking place came late in 2010 from a rather unexpected source: news that a shopkeeper had tricked NATO into believing he was a high-level Taliban official exploring the possibility of negotiations. Despite that embarrassing setback, the case confirmed that Afghan and Western officials alike are at least open to the idea of peace talks.

Were such talks ever to take place in any serious way, their success would depend in large part on the breadth of the coalition of actors willing to accept the terms of any settlement. That means that if the Afghan government is willing to talk about power sharing with the Taliban, it should be equally willing to talk about power sharing with peaceful opposition groups as well; otherwise, it could not expect broad support for a settlement. But power sharing with the peaceful opposition amounts to the same thing that proponents of governance reform have been demanding: to open the political system to more centers of power and thereby give more Afghans a greater stake in stability. So far, the country’s national leaders have been reluctant to accept such demands.

To encourage the national leadership to take early steps on the path to needed reforms, and increase the likelihood that a power-sharing agreement to end the war might be broadly acceptable, Afghanistan’s international partners should use Afghan leaders’ apparent willingness to negotiate with the Taliban, and their apparent dependence on international facilitation to do so, as leverage to encourage parallel negotiations over power sharing with both violent and peaceful opposition groups. In a society as divided as Afghanistan’s, that would be no small feat. But if access to the political system is not going to be available to most Afghans in the short term, access to a process in which political reforms are at least discussed would represent real progress—and even the perception of progress could contribute to greater political support and some degree of stability in the short term. Here I review the main efforts toward talks over the past few years and discuss some of the issues and constraints involved in getting the politics of peace right.

Talk about Peace Talks

The United States, which leads international security forces in Afghanistan, has always supported Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s “reintegration” policies, which have mainly involved offers of assistance and jobs to low- and mid-level fighters who disarm, disavow the Taliban, and reenter their communities. The disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) process that began in 2003 offers support mainly to fighters who supported the United States in ousting the Taliban; the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) program that began in 2005 is designed to help communities absorb disarmed fighters from the private militias of warlords and military commanders. Also in 2005, Karzai issued a presidential decree establishing the National Independent Peace and Reconciliation Commission (the Programme Tahkim Sulh, or PTS), led by former Afghan president (post-Soviet, pre-Taliban) Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, to host local-level disarmament and reintegration activities. The results of all of these programs have been mixed at best.

Until recently, however, the United States had firmly opposed Karzai’s talk of “reconciliation”—a negotiated settlement—with top commanders of the insurgency. Despite that opposition, Karzai and his political allies had been meeting with representatives and delegations of insurgents regarding what conditions would make formal talks possible. These “talks about talks,” as they often are called in the media, were facilitated by a large cast of international actors—Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Maldives, the United Nations, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), among others—and involved a number of mid- and high-level insurgents, including at various times, representatives (but not the leaders) of all three major Afghan Taliban factions: the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST), led by former Taliban regime leader Mullah Mohammad Omar; the Haqqani network, led by Taliban military commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin; and the Hezb-i-Islami (Party of Islam) led by former prime minister and military commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (HIG).

The first spurt in reporting on the talks about talks came at the end of 2008, when Karzai asked Saudi Arabia to act as an intermediary. In early 2009, the National Ulema Conference of Afghanistan publicly requested the same, and over the following months secrets talks involving former Taliban and al Qaeda members took place in Saudi Arabia. Public statements by prominent European officials, especially by the British foreign secretary in July of that year, revealed that most Europeans were ready to negotiate an exit from the conflict. The following November, Mullah Omar, head of the QST and spiritual leader of the Taliban insurgency, also signaled a softening of his opposition to talks by issuing a statement that, were the Taliban to return to power, he would not allow any groups operating within the country to threaten the security of any other country. The following month, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar started hinting at greater flexibility as well, and made it explicit in February 2010 when he released a 15-point proposal for a transition to Afghan control over security and a power-sharing scheme in government.  He sent a delegation that included his top deputy, Qutbuddin Helal, to Kabul in March to discuss it but apparently never received a serious response from the Afghan government.

Around the same time, Pakistan began asserting a privilege to be the main facilitator of talks; the arrests of Abdul Ghani Baradar, Muhammad Mir, Abdul Salam, Moulvi Abdul Kabir, Muhammad Younas, Agha Jan Motasim, and other key Taliban officials in Pakistan in February and March were widely interpreted as a signal that Pakistan would not tolerate peace talks without its direct approval and participation. Saudi Arabia’s role in the talks was immediately diminished, though it remains among the key interlocutors. Reports emerged in May that talks were taking place in Maldives involving HIG and QST, and again in June 2010 that Pakistan was facilitating meetings between Karzai and one or more of the Haqqanis.

Last summer, a conference on reconciliation, called the Peace Jirga, was held in Kabul. Soon after, Karzai announced the formation of a 70-member High Peace Council to be led by former Afghan president (post-Mujaddedi, pre-Taliban) Berhanuddin Rabbani, a political rival of both Karzai and Mujaddedi. The High Peace Council was intended to be the main body through which high-level talks with insurgents would take place, but Mujaddedi has strongly criticized Rabbani as being unqualified to lead it, citing abuses during his presidency. Long-standing tensions between the two former presidents, who now lead what should be complementary peace bodies, continue today.

The most recent round of reporting on talks began in September 2010, when the United States started sending signals that suggested it was warming to the idea of reconciliation. A series of media reports in October suggested high-level meetings had in fact taken place, with at least one instance in which NATO was said to have facilitated travel by some top Haqqani representatives to Kabul, including, reportedly, a former interim prime minister from the Taliban era, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, and his deputy, Mullah Sadre Azam. (The following month, however, was when the news broke that secret talks with QST deputy chief Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour were in fact being led by an imposter, though Afghan officials have denied he was ever brought to Kabul.) And just in the past few weeks, meetings were held between Pakistan and the High Peace Council, and the OIC indicated it would likely invite both the peace council and Taliban representatives to its March 2011 summit in Saudi Arabia.

Most of the reporting on these “talks about talks” is sourced anonymously, so it is difficult to verify their validity and impossible to determine what motivates the anonymous sources to plant these stories. What seems clear is, first, that some high-level contacts have been made between Afghan officials and representatives of all the main Taliban factions and, second, that to the degree any discussions of preconditions for formal talks are actually taking place, progress will be hampered by meddling from a wide range of international actors and Afghanistan’s complicated internal politics.

Politics after the Taliban

In late 2001, international forces picked sides in the Afghan civil war and helped the anti-Taliban forces known as the Northern Alliance eject the Taliban government from the country. The jockeying for position began immediately.

The Northern Alliance had never been much of an alliance to begin with, one of the reasons they had lost so much ground to the Taliban in the mid-1990s. Vast territory, rugged terrain, and a long tradition of local control in Afghan governance combined in a way that gave military commanders—whether for the Communist regime or for the anti-Soviet mujahideen—a great deal of regional autonomy. As the Soviets withdrew and the Communist government fell, local commanders who were able to find new sources of income to pay their troops were able to hold on to that territory; alliances were formed and broken based not mainly on religion, politics, or ideology, but on calculations of the potential for victory or survival. Some former Communists fought other former Communists; some former mujahideen fought other former mujahideen. Some expanded their territory; many lost their lives. Some of these commanders (or “warlords”) allied themselves with the Taliban early on. Many of them, however, miscalculated the Taliban’s rise and failed to form the alliances that might have kept the Taliban’s power in check.

With the Taliban’s fall in November 2001, many former commanders and mujahideen were prominent enough that they ended up playing a key role in the transition process that centered on an agreement signed in Bonn, Germany, in December 2001 to create a transitional government and plan for a constitutional convention, which took place two years later. The main disagreement over the structure of the government—to greatly oversimplify the politics involved—was between those ethnic Pashtuns whose members had historically played the role of king and so were in favor of a more centralized (presidential, unitary) system of government, and most non-Pashtuns, mainly Tajiks but also some Uzbeks and Hazara, who wanted a less centralized (parliamentary, federal) system more capable of protecting minority rights. A parliamentary system would have included a prime minister to balance the power of the president and might have empowered the legislature and the provinces to act as checks to concentrated executive power. The more centralized constitution was ultimately approved, however, and while the transition and interim governments were dominated by Northern Alliance Tajiks and other non-Pashtuns in ministerial and gubernatorial posts, Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, became president.

Afghanistan is a country where the most successful central governments have always had to respect the principal of subsidiarity, that is, they shared power with, and usually recognized the authority of, local political elites (tribal leaders, large landholders, etc.) in exchange for their support. Under the Afghan constitution, however, the president’s nominal authority reaches deeply into politics at all levels of government. Provincial governors and city mayors are presidential appointees, and no level of government below the national level, with the exception of some municipalities, can raise and keep its own taxes or plan and spend its own budget; it all goes through the central government. (At the national level, the constitution concentrates authority in the executive. The National Assembly is technically independent, but it is too weak to act as a check on presidential power; for example, the president can rule by decree whenever the legislature is out of session. The judiciary is even weaker, underfunded, and often corrupt.)

Karzai often has used his executive authority in a way that seems intended to weaken his rivals’ political influence: Ismail Khan, governor of Herat, was made energy minister in Kabul; Gul Agha Shirzai, governor of Kandahar, was reassigned to Nangarhar; Yunus Qanuni was removed as interior minister and made minister of education; Abdullah Abdullah lost his job as foreign minister before running against Karzai in the 2009 presidential election; Mohammad Qasim Fahim lost his job as defense minister and Abdul Rashid Dostum as deputy defense minister, both demoted to ceremonial jobs, although Fahim was elevated as Karzai’s running mate in 2009, while Dostum was later fired.

These and other figures, however, still have a significant political following and the ability to mobilize people, funds, and, if they considered it necessary, arms. Some, in fact, have thrived despite Karzai’s nominal power, often able to pressure Karzai to appoint their own supporters to influential government positions, especially at the local level.

As a consequence, Karzai has been criticized domestically both for abusing his power and for being too weak to counter the power of warlords and local despots. Both positions argue for some sort of reform: that formal power be deconcentrated from the executive to other branches, or from the center to lower levels of government, or that corruption and incompetence be rooted out from the current system so it can function properly.

Of the key figures affiliated with the Northern Alliance, most participated in the Bonn process, but some saw their influence wane afterwards; some of those marginalized from the center have turned to criminal enterprises to enrich themselves, while others have positioned themselves as a peaceful opposition to the Karzai government, whether from within the government (as elected legislators, for example) or as private citizens. Others who participated in the Bonn process—most significantly those affiliated with the former Afghan king, known as the Rome Group—never received positions of real influence in the government; disaffected, they are less active politically but no less interested in reform.

By contrast, the key figures associated with the Taliban regime, including the Haqqanis and Hizb-i-Islami, had not been permitted to participate in the Bonn process. Many dropped out of political life but found themselves constantly harassed by their former enemies, now in power; marginalized, many of them relocated to or across the border with Pakistan to join the insurgency, the violent opposition. These are the groups with which Karzai is reportedly exploring the possibility of negotiations.

The Peaceful Opposition

The term “peaceful opposition” is not meant to suggest the key actors all have a peaceful past. Most were military commanders of some sort, several should probably be tried as war criminals, some are engaged in racketeering, and a few would probably resort to arms in the future if they thought they could get away with it. The term is meant simply to distinguish those who are currently pursuing political change mainly through politics from those currently pursuing change mainly by force. It is not a black-and-white distinction.

The peaceful opposition, such as it is, includes political parties, humanitarian and advocacy organizations, religious institutions, professional associations, retired military commanders, and some ethnic and tribal leaders. Most consider the power of the president to be excessive and so seek reforms that would either grant them greater access to the political system or protect their local autonomy from the central government.

Political parties have not traditionally been strong in Afghanistan, and nor are they today. President Karzai does not belong to any party, and his main opponent in the last presidential election, Abdullah, ran as an independent as well. Patronage networks have been the most common way Afghans have connected to the wider political system, and political alliances are so notoriously fickle that it is difficult for small parties to coalesce into coherent and politically significant organizations. Given this weakness, it is difficult to speak of a political opposition in as clear a way as one can in British or American politics. Nonetheless, a number of significant political parties have existed in Afghanistan’s recent history, including Hezb-i-Islami (now split into two main factions: the insurgents led by Hekmatyar, and a peaceful party that holds a few dozen seats in the National Assembly), Junbesh-i-Milli-yi-Islami (founded by Dostum), and Jamiat-i-Islami (headed by Rabbani), to name just a few. More than a hundred smaller political parties exist and are represented in the National Assembly as well.

In early 2007, about 15 to 18 of these parties joined together to form Jabhe-e-Melli, or the National Front, a coalition that includes the organizations founded or led by Rabbani, Qanuni, Dostum, Fahim, Khan, and other figures, mostly the retired military commanders of the Northern Alliance. The National Front’s main policy positions are: a constitutional amendment creating a parliamentary system of government, with proportional representation and a prime minister; devolution of power to lower levels of government, including elected provincial governors and city mayors; and a reconciliation process that includes both armed and peaceful opposition groups and individuals.  Other parties and many independent politicians demand similar reforms aimed at deconcentrating power in government.

Beyond political parties, civil society has evolved considerably in recent history, responding in large part to the governance situation in the country. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) focused mainly on humanitarian assistance in the immediate post-Soviet era, but some expanded into development work soon thereafter. Many continued working through the Taliban era, despite official opposition. Since 2001, development and humanitarian NGOs have proliferated, as have women’s and youth organizations, religious institutions, and professional associations.  While most of these groups advocate for specific policy changes, many advocate for broader governance reforms and some have a direct interest in how peace talks might play out. For example, advocates for victims of war crimes and the rights of women would oppose any settlement that would relax constitutional protections for human rights, offer amnesty and other significant concessions to individuals who have committed war crimes, or allow the imposition of laws threatening women’s rights.

The Violent Opposition

The Taliban are not as cohesive a movement as they often are portrayed—Hekmatyar, for example, shares little in common with the former Taliban figures beyond violent opposition to the present regime—but there is some agreement among most factions and subfactions on what they are fighting for and what positions they would likely take in any negotiations. The demands that have received the most public attention are:

• the removal of Taliban leaders from the list of UN sanctions (some names already have been removed as a goodwill gesture, although others have been added as well);
• the release of all or some insurgent prisoners;
• the withdrawal of all foreign troops, either immediately or as soon as possible;
• the imposition of Islamic rules and, in some cases, punishments (although the different factions have widely divergent views of what this means); and
• a power-sharing agreement with the government.

HIG is the group most likely to come to a power-sharing agreement with the Karzai government, as Hekmatyar is an Islamist but also an opportunist. It is less clear how reconcilable the various Haqqani factions might be. The Haqqanis are in a transition of leadership from the founder, Jalaluddin, to his son Sirajuddin, who is considered more extreme and has weaker tribal loyalties (and therefore following) than his father, leading some to believe he would be less likely to defy Mullah Omar’s wishes. Omar’s QST has denied all reports of talks, and in fact, his participation would be complicated by U.S. opposition to granting concessions to him or his top deputies.

Toward Parallel Talks

All groups that would likely need to be involved in any successful settlement talks face significant constraints on their ability to negotiate, and ultimately to implement, any peace agreement:

• The current violent opposition groups, especially those who were in power during the Taliban regime, remember that international opposition to their regime made it extremely difficult for them to get international assistance or cooperation, and this complicated their ability to govern well. Most Afghans remember the regime as well and do not want to be governed by it again. Since they are unlikely to get support to be the government again, some power-sharing arrangement with the Afghan government is probably the best they can hope for.
• The peaceful opposition is not a cohesive group, even though they generally agree on the need to create more centers of power in the Afghan political system. They are at a disadvantage in that they have to operate within a system that is designed in a way that limits their influence over policy, although the implicit threat of future violence offers a degree of de facto influence. The best they can probably hope for is to find international allies to advocate for opening up the formal political system and to provide assistance aimed at strengthening the political influence of those demanding governance reforms.
• The government of Hamid Karzai is alienated from large swaths of the Afghan population. It governs at the center of a centralized system but does not have anywhere close to the capacity it would need to actually make that system work for the majority of Afghans. This challenge to governance is complicated further by a perception among many politically significant Afghans that Karzai, his appointees, and government bureaucrats in general are inept, corrupt, and untrustworthy. The best he can probably hope for is to give the violent opposition just enough of what they want so as to minimize the number of people who want to kill him, but not so much that he triggers a violent reaction from the (currently) peaceful opposition.

The international community plays an important but problematic role in this situation. International organizations and donors are greatly constrained by the fact that many Afghans believe the international community cannot or will not deliver on long-term promises and that international and Afghan security forces are losing the war. The transition strategy depends in large part on the ability to train Afghan forces to take over security, but an adequate number of international trainers is not available. Even if the trainers were to become available and the training went well enough for the transfer to occur, it is not clear that the civilian government would have adequate capacity by 2014 to oversee the forces—and it is fairly certain that it will not have the resources to pay for them. International assistance is widely expected to decline significantly in the next two years, so questions remain as to how any of this capacity will even be built, particularly when a growing number of international troop contributors are announcing their imminent departure.

No wonder the United Nations, most Europeans, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and even the United States, as well as the Afghan government itself, have acknowledged that the war will likely end through a negotiated settlement rather than a military victory. Now comes the hard part: figuring out how (or whether) negotiations can be used as part of strategy for long-term security and stability.

It is not clear that the High Peace Council can succeed in negotiating the terms of formal talks with the violent opposition; nor is it clear which factions and subfactions of the insurgency will participate in formal talks, or when, if ever.

Two things do seem clear, however: first, peace talks of some sort are likely to occur sooner or later; and second, any peace talks through which the Afghan government offers serious concessions to the violent opposition but little or nothing to the peaceful opposition will be unlikely to result in a lasting agreement. Afghan leaders have long made decisions about alliances based on calculations of the potential for victory or survival. A peace process that promises rewards, such as power sharing, to the violent opposition without a commensurate set of rewards to the peaceful opposition would likely affect the calculations of the latter. It might not cause them to rearm and resume civil war, but it almost certainly would poison the political environment to a degree that would make the country nearly ungovernable.

Afghanistan’s governance challenges are hard enough as it is: the government simply lacks the capacity to govern all Afghans through the extremely centralized system laid out in the present constitution, and it will take a generation or more to develop that capacity. Meanwhile, the country needs to be governed, and too many Afghans still do not have bribery-free access to basic services, justice, security, or decisionmaking processes through the government. For example, with regard to the adjudication of disputes, some Afghans are lucky enough to have remnants of a customary system in place; some attempt do-it-yourself justice, often with disastrous results for local stability; some can plead their case to a local strongman; and in some places, the local Taliban offer to mediate disputes quickly and without bribery, and the offer sometimes is gratefully accepted. Without a system of governance that is both accessible and acceptable to locals, these competing sources of authority will continue to frustrate efforts to stabilize the country enough for international forces to draw down.

Given the incapacity at the national level, there has been much talk of building “subnational” governance capacity to serve Afghans better at the provincial, district, municipal, and village levels. Improving subnational governance, the theory goes, would enable national authorities to share the burden of governing with lower levels. To date, however, Karzai and others at the center of power have resisted reforms that would devolve their authority and ultimately dilute their power. Most international donors as well subscribe to the notion that it is better to build a strong and capable central government than it is to empower subnational (and especially nonstate) competitors. Given the country’s recent history and present fear of fragmentation, this is entirely understandable. But the centralized, technocratic approach to state building is also unrealistic in the absence of commensurate international resources and strategic patience, both of which are rapidly declining. Opening up the political system to other centers of power—whether to political parties at the national level or government and quasi-government officials at the subnational level—would spread the burden of governing and give more Afghans better access to basic services and decisionmaking processes.

There are multiple paths to opening the political system. One is by constitutional amendment, which is a demand of the peaceful opposition, but there is little stomach among most international donors for a new constitutional convention, and this hesitation makes it easy for Karzai to ignore domestic demands for reform. Another option is to encourage (somehow) Karzai and his ministers to put their full support behind implementation of the subnational governance policy, which his cabinet passed early in 2010. But foot-dragging by ministry officials jealously guarding their centralized authority has delayed that policy’s implementation, and the head of the agency tasked with coordinating implementation resigned in frustration in December. The burden must lie with proponents of either of these options to identify what leverage the international community has, or is willing to use, to encourage Karzai and his ministers to agree to these reforms.

The best approach might be to use Karzai’s apparent desire to negotiate with the Taliban, and his dependence on international facilitation to do so, as an opportunity to encourage parallel talks with the peaceful opposition: the United States, or NATO, or some ad hoc coalition of countries could agree to facilitate peace talks with some combination of Taliban factions, in exchange for the government’s commitment to begin parallel talks with some combination of political parties and civil society groups. The National Front would be one natural candidate to be included in the parallel talks, as many of its members are already members of the High Peace Council, which is currently at the center of the talks about talks. But the parallel talks should not be limited to that coalition; local governments and community leaders should be represented as well.

Regarding the peace process with the Taliban, the talks about talks will likely continue for at least another year or two, but once they happen, the main subject is likely to be power sharing. Afghanistan’s most important international military allies and donors should not wait to begin advocating for parallel talks with peaceful opposition groups about the same subject.

Expectations should be set very low: reforming the system of governance will be a long and tedious process, and getting those reforms to work in practice will be difficult (although participation in such talks might be enough in itself to make some groups feel included in the political system). A number of paths to reform are conceivable, any of which could fail: a constitutional convention (unlikely in the short term), legislation (doubtful), a series of presidential decrees (possible), or simply a national, public conversation among Afghans about the future of their country (probably the most we can hope for in the short term). Regardless of what direction these parallel talks ultimately take, what matters will be finding a politically feasible way to begin that process—and that should be the subject of parallel talks about parallel talks.

Robert D. Lamb is senior fellow and deputy director of the Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation (C3), formerly the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and a research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM).

Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

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