The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties — a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm.
Negotiating with the Taliban has long been advocated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the British and Pakistani governments, but resisted by Washington.
The Guardian has learned that while the US government is still officially resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way and Washington is encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.
“There is a change of mindset in DC,” a senior official in Washington said. “There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing.”
That missing element was talks with the Taliban leadership, the official said.
The US rethink comes in the aftermath of the departure of General Stanley McChrystal as the top US commander in Afghanistan.
US President Barack Obama, apparently frustrated at the way the war is going, has reminded his national security advisers that while he was on the election campaign trail in 2008, he advocated talking to the nation’s enemies.
A US review of its Afghanistan policy is due to be completed in December, but officials in Washington, Kabul and Islamabad with knowledge of internal discussions said feelers had been put out to the Taliban. Negotiations would be conducted largely in secret, through a web of contacts, possibly involving Pakistan and Saudi Arabia or organizations with back-channel links to the Taliban.
“It will be messy and could take years,” a diplomatic source said
The change of heart by the US comes as Afghanistan hosts the biggest international gathering in its capital for 40 years, with representatives from 60 countries including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The dominant theme of the Kabul conference is “reintegration,” which involves reaching out to low-level insurgents to encourage them to lay down their arms.
Earlier this year Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, distinguished between “reintegration,” which the US supported, and “reconciliation” or negotiating with senior Taliban.
“Let me be clear. There is no American involvement in any reconciliation process,” he said.
There is growing disenchantment in the US with the war in Afghanistan and members of the Senate’s foreign relations committee last week questioned Holbrooke over what they described as a lack of clarity on an exit strategy.
The US has no agreed position on who among the leaders of the insurgency should be wooed and who would be beyond the pale. Taliban leader Mullah Omar would be a problem as he provided Osama bin Laden with bases before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The US would also find it problematic to deal with the Pakistan-based insurgents led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose group pioneered suicide attacks in Afghanistan. The third main element in the insurgency is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has hinted he is ready to break ranks.
A source with knowledge of the process said: “There is no agreed US position, but there is agreement that Karzai should lead on this. They would expect the Pakistanis to deliver the Haqqani network in any internal settlement.”
The US has laid down basic conditions for any group seeking negotiations. They are: end all ties to al-Qaeda, end violence and accept the Afghan constitution.
A senior Pakistani diplomat said: “The US needs to be negotiating with the Taliban; those Taliban with no links to al-Qaeda. We need a power-sharing agreement in Afghanistan, and it will have to be negotiated with all the parties.”
“The Afghan government is already talking to all the shareholders and the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Mullah Omar. The Americans have been setting ridiculous preconditions for talks. You can’t lay down such preconditions when you are losing,” the envoy said.
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