A television in an appliance shop in Kabul shows Afghan President Hamid Karzai taking part in a live debate with two of his rivals, Ramazan Bashardost and Ashraf Ghani.
KABUL, Afghanistan
- Whether and how to negotiate peace with the Taliban has become
the one issue that no candidate in the Afghan presidential election can avoid taking a stand on. There is broad agreement that the war must end, but debate
swirls around whether the government of President Hamid Karzai is moving
effectively toward persuading the Taliban to end their insurgency.
Although Mr. Karzai has often talked about negotiating with the Taliban, little concrete has happened. The government's reconciliation program for Taliban fighters is barely functioning. A Saudi mediation effort has stalled. Last-minute efforts to engage the Taliban in order to allow elections to take place remain untested. Meanwhile the Obama administration has just sent thousands more troops here in an attempt to push back Taliban gains.
Mr. Karzai, who polls indicate is still the front-runner, is the most vocal candidate in calling for negotiations, pledging that if he is re-elected he will hold a traditional tribal gathering and invite members of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another opposition leader, to make peace.
And just in the past few weeks, his government has started several initiatives to approach local Taliban commanders through tribal elders. The government also has started work to win over the tribes by hiring thousands of their young men to be part of a local protection force, primarily to ensure security for elections. But each of Mr. Karzai's three main opponents is critical of his record in following through on such promises.
Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani and Ramazan Bashardost all oppose the Taliban, but they also promise if elected to do better and to make peace a priority. The candidates differ on how to pursue a settlement: by negotiating a comprehensive peace with the Taliban leadership; or by trying to draw away midlevel Taliban commanders and foot soldiers, an approach that has been tried with little success over the past seven years as the ranks of fighters have swelled.
Mr. Abdullah, the candidate for the largest opposition bloc, the National Front, and Mr. Ghani, a former finance minister, say the first step must be a grass-roots approach through community and tribal councils to address the grievances of people who have taken up arms against the government. "If you lose the people, you lose the war," Mr. Abdullah said in an interview.
Mr. Ghani advocates a cease-fire as the next step, with political negotiations only later. "It's not going to be easy," he told journalists at a briefing. "It is going to be quite complex and quite tough, but we need to create the conditions of confidence."
Among those urging a wide-reaching political solution is the head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide. A peace process, or reconciliation as he prefers to call it, has to be a top priority of any new government, as does improving relations with Pakistan, which has long backed the Taliban, he said.
The groundwork for that process needs to be laid through the winter, he says, in order to forestall another season of fighting next spring. He also says that the effort has to be broader than the reconciliation and reintegration of local commanders envisaged by the United States military.
"You have different views - those who believe you can do it locally, from province to province, district to district," he said. "I don't think that is the case, I think you have to have a wider process."
But the United States and NATO want to negotiate from a position of strength, diplomats and military officials said. "Reconciliation is important, but not now," said one Western diplomat in Kabul, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It's not going to happen until the insurgency is weaker and the government is stronger."
Thomas Ruttig, co-director of Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent policy research group, proposed in a recent report multilayered contacts or talks with different elements of the insurgency. He also advocated a long-term reconciliation process across the country to address the alienation from the government of many groups who are tempted to join the Taliban, and to heal the wounds of 30 years of war.
The Obama administration has done little publicly to push the issue forward, offering to talk to moderate members of the Taliban but drawing the line at those linked to Al Qaeda.
"We and our Afghan allies stand ready to welcome anyone supporting the Taliban who renounces Al Qaeda, lays down their arms, and is willing to participate in the free and open society that is enshrined in the Afghan Constitution," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a speech last month.
Yet critics say that essentially demanding that the Taliban surrender will not produce results.
The few senior members of the Taliban who have come over to the government warn that there is so much distrust of the government and foreign forces that it is deterring even low-level members of the Taliban. They have watched the poor treatment of tribal leaders and elders by the government and foreign forces.
Abdul Wahid Baghrani, an important tribal leader from Helmand Province who went over to the government in 2005 under its reconciliation program, negotiated the surrender of the Taliban in 2001 with Mr. Karzai. Now he lives in a house in western Kabul but is largely ignored by the government, despite the enormous influence he could exercise.
Three months ago his eldest son, Zia ul-Haq, 32, was killed, along with his wife and driver, when British helicopters swooped in on their car as they were traveling in Helmand. Two Western officials confirmed the shooting but said it was a mistake. The forces were trying to apprehend a high-level Taliban target, they said.
"My son was not an armed Talib, he was a religious Talib," he said. The word Talib means religious student. "From any legal standpoint it is not permitted to fire on a civilian car.
"This is not just about my son," he said. "Every day we are losing hundreds of people, and I care about them as much as I care for my son."
Despite the deaths, he has remained in Kabul and still advocates peace negotiations.
He said it was wrong to consider the Taliban leadership, or the leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, as irreconcilable. "It is not the opinion of people who know him and work with him," he said.
"Of course it is possible to make peace with the Taliban - they are Afghans," he said. "The reason they are fighting is because they are not getting the opportunity to make peace."
