Winston Churchill was right when he said that “it is better to Jaw Jaw that war war.” However, he was referring to relations between rational Western actors or perhaps even semi-rational native chiefs when the choice was to negotiate before resorting to bloodshed. If negotiations, rather than fighting, can serve the national interest, they should be the first line of effort. That is not the case with Afghanistan where the fighting has already taken place. That is why I disagree with the Washington Post Editorial Board’s recommendation that we diplomatically engage with the Taliban in the near term. The recent devastating earthquakes would seem to lend support the Post editorial, but there are many reasons that it is too early for re-engagement.
As was the case with Vietnam, a cooling off period is in order before we consider anything like establishing normal relations with the Taliban.
To be brutally frank, the Afghan people — not just the Taliban — are not worthy of our attention at his point. We are not contemplating resuming fighting in Afghanistan, so it is not an “either-or” choice. They got themselves into the situation they are in and they should be allowed to stew in their own juices. At this point, there is no national interest involved in engaging with their current government.
The Afghans got themselves into the situation they are in. We spent billions in treasure and thousands in lives trying to help them to no avail. Afghanistan is not worth any more effort on our part. I am not speaking of the those Afghans who fought on our side in the late conflict and were relocated to the United States. They made the difficult choices that their cousins who remain in the country did not. I found out the hard way as a State Department governance advisor that the rural population, which largely supported the Taliban, wasn’t buying what we were selling in the way of nation-building and democratization.
Most of the people in the remote agricultural district where I led an interagency support team were perfectly happy living in the 14th century and wanted nothing to do with equal opportunity for women, much less letting girls be educated. They didn’t mind boys learning to read if it did not interfere with the melon harvest; which it usually did. They may not have openly supported the local Taliban, but they did not go out of their way to help the government forces or the U.S.-led coalition. Most simply didn’t care who was in charge as long as they were left alone. Although they would take any free stuff that we handed out, it certainly did not buy loyalty. At least they were honest about it. The Taliban gave them what they wanted. If that includes a degree of poverty, ignorance, natural disasters, and disease as part of the package, so be it.
My greatest disdain is reserved for the urban elites and the senior military leaders who professed to be working toward Western-style democracy while lining their own pockets. They were the first to start cutting backroom deals with the Taliban when it became obvious that we were really going to leave. The poster children for this group is the Karzai family, which is doing just as well under the Taliban as they ever did partnered with the American-led coalition. The Afghan knack for treachery and double-dealing runs deep in the culture.
Of the four reasons the Post editorial board gives for re-engaging with the Taliban, only one passes anything like the common sense test. That is the ability to facilitate the search for missing Americans. But there are no MIA service personnel that I know of. Those Americans who remained behind generally did so for their own personal reasons. These are better identified through non-governmental efforts than any American partnership with the Taliban.
The Post editorial board cites counter-terrorism as a U.S. reason for some re-engagement. The Taliban are fighting the Islamic State-Khorasan or ISIS-K for control of the country. It is true that ISIS-K is a transnational threat while the Taliban confine themselves to Afghanistan. But that is not enough of a national interest for us to actively seek counter-terror cooperation. If the Taliban get in enough trouble to come to the U.S. for help, we can always consider the merits of some assistance. But that day is a long way off.
The availability of natural resources is also cited as a reason for re-engagement. This is another area where I have some experience, most of it negative. To get at these resources, roads are needed. The resistance of locals to road construction under the last regime had less to do with support for the Taliban than it did with ensuring that security forces could not disrupt the poppy trade. Given that a large Taliban faction — the Haqqani Network — is heavily into the poppy business, it is unlikely that they will support resource exploitation unless they get a healthy cut. There are easier sources of rare earth metals than that.
Perhaps the weakest of the Post‘s arguments for re-engagement is humanitarian aid. There is absolutely no assurance that the Taliban will be any more competent to deliver aid to those really needing it than was Karzai or any of his successors. Corruption ranks with treachery as foremost Afghan cultural challenges. Any U.S. financial aid to recent earthquake victims will likely stay in Kabul. Even if U.S. relief workers were allowed into the country, they would immediately become targets for ISIS-K. Let the NGOs try to unwind that ball of string.
Both the editorial board and President Trump are correct in stating that we need have no permanent enemies, but neither should we rush to heal old wounds from the late war. As was the case with Vietnam, a cooling off period is in order before we consider anything like establishing normal relations with the Taliban.
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Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel who served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and did tours as a civilian State Department Senior Governance Advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan and a tour as a Defense Department instructor in Kabul.