Talking with the Taliban

February 15, 2010

By Mustafa Qadri

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar has publicly ruled out negotiations with US-led forces until all foreign troops leave Afghanistan, a demand he has made ever since US forces invaded in late 2001. However, with the US building a massive new embassy in Kabul and an extensive network of military bases, it is questionable whether they do in fact intend to ever leave the country entirely.

But either way, there’s anecdotal evidence to suggest that Mullah Omar is actually more flexible than his rhetoric indicates.

According to Sultan Amir Tarar, the retired Pakistan military spy chief considered Omar’s mentor when the Taliban was patronised by Pakistan in the 1990s, he is ready to talk. Since last year, media reports have suggested that Omar has indicated the possibility of a renegotiation of the national constitution with other Afghan leaders (the Taliban considers the current one illegitimate owing to Western involvement in its drafting). Another demand is the integration of ethnic Pashtun Taliban forces into the Tajik-dominated Afghan National Army. But most significant of all was Omar’s statement last November during the Muslim holy festival of Eid, that a future Taliban government would not pose a threat to neighbouring countries, a clear suggestion that al-Qaeda would no longer be welcome.

For Pakistan, this has made disarming the Afghan Taliban within its borders even less appealing than it already was. For a start, Pakistani security forces have had to rely heavily on pro-Afghan Taliban commanders in North and South Waziristan to capture the main sanctuaries of the Pakistani Taliban. Unlike its Afghan cousin, the Pakistan Taliban movement has sought to overthrow the Pakistan state, an existential threat to Pakistan that has meant current operations have been aimed at eliminating this branch. Even so, the Army, which is co-ordinating operations (although much of it has been undertaken by the paramilitary Frontier Corp) has chosen not to expand the fighting into neighbouring tribal areas such as North Waziristan and other areas of the South, arguing any such a move would be highly destabilising. According to senior spokesperson Gen. Athar Abbas, Pakistan is looking to consolidate its gains in those two regions rather than open new fronts, because security forces are already ‘overstretched.’

Gen Tariq Khan, one of Pakistan’s most experienced field commanders and currently Inspector General of the paramilitary Frontier Corp, which has been heavily involved in counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban, echoes those concerns. In Afghanistan, US-led forces are expected to engage the Taliban in an attempt to force them to the negotiating table. If and when that occurs, Khan argues, it will be difficult for Pakistan to retain the sensitive ceasefires that enable access to strategic regions of the tribal areas and ensure that the Afghan Taliban don’t join the insurgency in Pakistan. ‘Pakistan can’t fight on all fronts [at once],’ Khan says.

Yet such calls have created much consternation among US planners who still have reservations about Pakistan’s resolve to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda aligned groups within its borders. The United States has scaled up its missile strikes on suspected militant strikes. In its largest strike to date, drone aircraft fired 19 missiles at a village in North Waziristan in an attempt to kill Sirajuddin Haqqani, operational commander of the powerful pro-Taliban Haqqani network. Once an anti-Soviet mujahedeen on the CIA payroll, Sirajuddin’s father Jalaluddin was a key ally of Pakistan during the 1990s when it was scouting for a proxy to exert influence over Afghanistan.

Retired intelligence officials in Islamabad told The Diplomat that Pakistan has continued to maintain contact with the Haqqanis, but it has only limited influence over them. Shuja Nawaz, author of the seminal text on the Pakistan Army and a long-time military insider, agrees with that assessment. But Western officials remain deeply suspicious of lingering Pakistani links to Haqqani and other members of ‘the big three’ of the Afghan Taliban–Mullah Omar and Gulbaddin Hekmatyar.