UNITED NATIONS // Against the backdrop of a deteriorating security and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, support for opening peace talks with the Taliban increased this week with a United Nations call for "political engagement" with "relevant" parties. Kai Eide, the UN envoy to Afghanistan, called for a "political surge" to restore stability to the insurgency-wracked nation through negotiation and dialogue rather than military operations.
His comments follow a statement from Brig Mark Carleton-Smith, Britain's top military commander in Afghanistan, who told The Times that military success over the Taliban was "neither feasible nor supportable". Speaking with reporters in Kabul, Mr Eide said: "We all know that we cannot win [this conflict] militarily. It has to be won through political means - and that means political engagement. "Then comes a question: with whom do you engage? My general answer is that if you want to have relevant results, you must speak to those who are relevant. If you want to have results that matter, you must speak to those who matter."
Last week's Security Council report on Afghanistan described a deteriorating security situation despite bolstering international forces and the Afghan National Army. In August, the number of security incidents rose to 983, the highest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and a 44 per cent increase on the same month in 2007. It brought this year's death toll to about 3,800, a third of them civilians, according to the UN.
Ban Ki-moon, the world body's secretary general, warned that insurgents were becoming increasingly "sophisticated" in orchestrating attacks and inflicting ever-greater misery on a beleaguered population. Violence is compounding a humanitarian crisis, with the combination of conflict, drought and food price hikes leaving one-sixth of the population in need of assistance. Fighting hampers the efforts of aid workers, with the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) ranking 90 of the country's nearly 400 districts as an area of extreme risk. Attacks on humanitarian workers and non-governmental organisations have also become increasingly frequent and deadly.
"I will take this opportunity to appeal to the Taliban and to appeal to their leaders to ensure access for food distribution and to expand the humanitarian agenda that we should share," said Mr Eide. "There are disagreements on so many things - but let us demonstrate that we can share this humanitarian agenda." Seven years after the US-led invasion, the lack of stability is not the only problem impacting the lives of ordinary Afghans. High rates of crime and corruption, together with mass unemployment, have left many citizens struggling to make ends meet.
In this context, Brig Carleton-Smith called international forces to "sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement" with the Taliban. "We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that ? can be managed by the Afghan army." The brigadier's comments, together with those of Mr Eide, echo those from servicemen and diplomats that negotiations with insurgents will ultimately be needed to bring an end to the conflict.
Daniel Markey, a former US State Department official and regional analyst, said the prospect of negotiating with the Taliban had been "steadily bubbling" for months, but that the comments from Brig Carleton-Smith and Mr Eide were the "most high-profile" statements to date. Mr Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said a peace deal with the Taliban would prove controversial in the US, where "the Taliban has been painted in the blackest terms".
American officials would be unwilling to accept high-level members of the Taliban into an Afghan government because such individuals are "tied up with al Qa'eda, and al Qa'eda is totally off-limits". The analyst suggested negotiations with some sections of the Taliban could help broaden popular support for Afghanistan's government while also being acceptable in Washington. "I would be very surprised if we saw some significant shift on the part of the US government [towards a] major settlement with respect to the old Afghan Taliban," said Mr Markey.
"But if this can be something that cleaves off the Afghan Taliban from that original leadership, then that would be a real victory because that would allow the Karzai government, or any successor government, to bring on board a large part of the population that has until now felt entirely out of the equation." jreinl@thenational.ae
