An Alternative for Afghan Peace Talks

Here’s something to ponder: Though it is probably years away and though there are countless obstacles preventing talks from even getting started, what might a settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government look like?

If the parties ever make it to an internationally mediated negotiation, the Taliban are likely to insist on having far more influence across Afghan society, given their history and their public statements since 2001. How might that happen? The government in Kabul would probably not agree to imposing Taliban demands regarding women or education everywhere. Nor is the international community likely to indulge the Taliban with talk of giving them a hand in rewriting the Constitution.

But another option exists that the Taliban might accept, one that allows them to achieve part of their goal of making the country more Islamic: allowing local governments to establish and enforce their own laws.

For a nation with weak government institutions, Afghanistan paradoxically has one of the most centralized government systems in the world: there are no institutions at the provincial or district level that are permitted to create their own laws. This has been a longstanding grievance among many Afghans. Decentralizing power would allow the Taliban (and all Afghans, for that matter) to get more of what they want in the areas where they have influence, but they would get less where they have no influence.

Many Afghans and outside analysts fear that decentralization would concede slices of the country to the Taliban, giving them freedom to attack Kabul, provide safe havens to Al Qaeda or disfigure the faces of runaway brides. As a result, any decentralization would be unlikely to grant the Taliban carte blanche but would instead permit them to enforce cultural norms that are already widespread in their areas of influence. Relatively speaking, decentralization might also appeal to Kabul because the Taliban are expected to control much of the east and south after 2014 anyway, making such a concession less painful and more akin to recognizing reality.

This arrangement might, for instance, allow local, state-sanctioned Shariah courts to adjudicate civil law disputes. Education norms could be drafted and put in effect province by province. And district and provincial governors might be chosen locally, though Kabul would be hard pressed to forfeit its authority to appoint provincial leadership. To be sure, any such modifications would face immense logistical hurdles and political opposition. Would these newly devolved powers, for instance, go to individual voters, or would traditional and locally based leadership councils, or shuras, be empowered to appoint provincial and district leadership?

Alternatively, if negotiations do not go down the path of decentralization, the parties might consider a temporary unity government to build trust in governing together, or a more permanent power-sharing arrangement that gives the Taliban and other coalitions veto power over the most important decisions made in Kabul. Another variant might allocate a number of Parliament seats or ministries to the Taliban. (In that vein, through a Norwegian intermediary, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, reportedly offered the Taliban control of the Ministry of Justice and the position of chief justice on the Afghan Supreme Court.) If the Taliban were to accept an allocation of ministries, though, it is hard to imagine such a deal without either defense or interior included, frightening as such a prospect would be to non-Pashtuns.

Inevitably, any settlement would also have to consider Pakistani interests, and even if the Taliban grow weary of violent conflict, Pakistan will be unlikely to grow weary of financing it. It has become conventional wisdom that the Pakistani military prefers an unstable Afghanistan (even at the risk of destabilizing Pakistan) to prevent India from using Afghanistan to encircle and threaten Pakistan. So even if the Taliban are willing to diverge from Pakistan, their handlers in the Pakistani intelligence service could spoil any deal by shifting resources to another Islamist faction that could continue the war against Kabul. In that case, even after the rosiest of political settlements, Afghanistan’s security would be as marred as Iraq’s is today.

Still, Islamabad might support a power-sharing agreement if it gave the Taliban enough power to minimize Indian influence in Kabul, particularly within the Afghan security forces. But even if the Taliban settle for control over some of the ‘softer’ ministries, like education and justice (already a stretch), Pakistan’s intelligence agency cares far more about the ‘harder’ ministries like interior and defense, making consensus over power sharing even more elusive.

For that reason, more common ground might be found in a decentralization that formalizes Taliban influence in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Even with that, it remains unclear if Pashtun buffer zones would be enough to reassure Pakistan. They weren’t enough in the mid-1990s, when the Taliban controlled most of the south and east and a Tajik commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was defense minister.

Ultimately, a peaceful solution, if one is to be found, will require a great many stars to align, and at all the right moments. What seems far more likely is that Afghanistan will face tremendous change, perhaps much of it for the worse, and that the United States will be in a position only to help, not rescue, its Afghan allies.

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David H. Young is a conflict resolution expert, a former civilian adviser to NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan and an adjunct fellow at the American Security Project. A longer version of this article is available on his Web site, and he can be found on Twitter.