New
bid to break Afghan
stalemate By Barbara Slavin
WASHINGTON - As the Barack Obama
administration seeks to limit its involvement in a
third Muslim conflict in Libya, efforts are
intensifying to help it find a political solution
to the longest United States war - in Afghanistan.
Authors of a new report released Wednesday
by the Century Foundation, entitled "Afghanistan:
Negotiating Peace", said they consulted
extensively with US officials in carrying out
research and making recommendations.
The
report's main proposal is to have the United
Nations secretary general name a "facilitator" to
supervise peace talks among
Afghans and foreign
stakeholders in Afghanistan.
While no
individual was specified, Jim Dobbins, a member of
the task force that produced the report and a
former US top envoy dealing with Afghanistan,
suggested three possibilities: former UN secretary
general Kofi Annan, former UN representative to
Afghanistan (and Century Fund task force co-chair)
Lakhdar Brahimi, or Staffan de Mistura, the
current head of the United Nations Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
De Mistura
is already promoting peace talks and international
buy-in to a process initiated by Afghan President
Hamid Karzai. Appearing on Tuesday before the
Middle East Institute, a Washington think-tank, he
said he had convened ambassadors from the United
States, Afghanistan's neighbors and other
interested parties several times this year in
Kabul in what he called a "Silk Road" initiative
and hoped to hold a conference in Istanbul later
this year to endorse a "stability pact" for
Afghanistan.
Karzai has named a High Peace
Council led by former Afghan president Burhanuddin
Rabbani to reach out to ethnic and tribal leaders
throughout the country as well as Taliban based in
both Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
UNAMA is
supporting the council by providing logistics,
including eight helicopters and three planes, de
Mistura said. He said the council has traveled
outside Afghanistan to Turkey and Pakistan and
also plans a trip to Iran.
The 15-member
Century Fund task force also traveled widely,
consulting various parties in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Although Iran did not respond to a
request to visit Tehran, Brahimi met with then
Iranian foreign minister Manuchehr Mottaki outside
Iran and there were contacts with Iranian
academics as well, said Jeffrey Laurenti, the
Century Fund's director of foreign policy
programs.
An upcoming report by this
reporter for another think-tank, the Atlantic
Council, recommends both multilateral and
bilateral talks between the US and Iran to discuss
Afghanistan's political future.
Both de
Mistura and the Century Fund task force said "the
time is now" to begin negotiating a political
solution before the US starts to reverse its
military surge in Afghanistan this summer.
Despite US gains in reversing the
Taliban's resurgence, the war is at a "stalemate
militarily", said Tom Pickering, a former US
undersecretary of state and ambassador to Russia
and India who co-chaired the Century Fund task
force with Brahimi. Pickering said that "it is
time to bring the threads together" of various
initiatives and begin a serious negotiating
process.
The US State Department had no
immediate comment on the report. Dobbins said,
however, that the Obama administration encouraged
the task force and helped set up its appointments
in Pakistan.
In a speech before the Asia
Society in New York on February 18, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton pledged a "diplomatic surge"
this year to complement the military offensive and
efforts to accelerate Afghan economic development.
"Both we and the Afghans believe that the
security and governance gains produced by the
military and civilian surges have created an
opportunity to get serious about a responsible
reconciliation process, led by Afghans and
supported by intense regional diplomacy and strong
US backing," she said.
On Tuesday, Karzai
announced that Afghan forces would take the lead
in ensuring security in three provinces and four
cities in July as the US surge ends. The US is
expected to bring home a limited number of troops
this year, down from a peak of 100,000. The
transition to Afghan security control is supposed
to culminate in 2014, although a US military
presence may continue at Afghan request.
The various diplomatic initiatives aim to
produce a durable peace agreement before 2014.
The obstacles to a resolution of the
conflict are numerous. The United States has
insisted that the Taliban renounce all ties with
al-Qaeda, forswear violence and agree to
participate peacefully in Afghan politics under a
2004 constitution - although Clinton made clear on
February 18 that these were US goals and no longer
preconditions for negotiations. The Taliban has
demanded the withdrawal of foreign forces.
Even if these differences can be breached,
Afghanistan's neighbors have historically
exacerbated the conflict by intervening in support
of various proxies. Pakistan and India, in
particular, have regarded the war in Afghanistan
as a zero sum game in which gains for
Pakistan-backed factions mean defeat for Indian
interests.
Iran is opposed to a long-term
US military presence on its borders which could be
a staging point for US attacks on Iran. At the
same time, Iran does not want a return to power of
the Taliban and would like to stem drug production
and trafficking that has addicted millions of
Iranians.
The Century Fund report said
that "for all sides, the longer negotiations are
delayed, the higher the price is likely to be for
restoring peace at the end".
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