Afghanistan is very different from Ulster . . . Taleban hate democracy

Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States is engaging in preliminary talks with the Taleban hardly came as a surprise. The ten-year-old war in Afghanistan is increasingly unpopular with voters.

Altogether, 1,629 US armed forces personnel have lost their lives in the conflict and the financial cost to the US is estimated to be running at £70 billion for the first six months of this year.

The president’s political advisers have urged that the withdrawal of large numbers of US troops and peace talks with the Taleban would help his prospects of winning the next presidential election. The case of those advising against speeding up US withdrawal has not been helped by the strong suspicions that elements in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) colluded in hiding knowledge of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, and by president Hamid Karzai’s failure to take more effective action against the endemic corruption in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister David Cameron has been under similar pressure to speed up the withdrawal of UK forces. Three hundred and seventy-five British troops have been killed in the conflict, and the financial burden amounts to more than £1bn per year.

Some other Nato allies have already withdrawn their troops. The British are understood to be acting as “facilitators” for the preliminary talks with the Taleban.

There have been suggestions that the British government’s experience of developing the peace process in Northern Ireland means a similar style of peace effort should be followed with the Taleban. However, Afghanistan is very different from Northern Ireland. The Taleban have a fanatical hatred of democracy, which they regard as a Western disease.

Mullah Omar, who gave safe haven to al-Qaeda until the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001, and who is recognised as the “spiritual leader” of both the Afghan Taleban and the Pakistan Taleban, and his hard-line colleagues share some of the ideology purveyed by al-Qaeda. They believe in waging a jihad, or holy war, against “foreign occupiers” and they have adopted typical al-Qaeda tactics and targets such as co-ordinated suicide bombings in public places against civilians, roadside bombs which have killed many civilians, as well as International Security Assistance Force soldiers, in combination with guerrilla attacks.

The suicide bombing of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul in which at least 20 civilians were killed and the attacks on United Nations premises are clear examples of their brutality. In view of their track record it is hard to disagree with the US general who has observed that it would be wrong to expect peace “any time soon”.

It is obviously right to seek out the more pragmatic factions of the Taleban and to influence them to renounce violence and enter a genuine peace process, but this is an extremely challenging and complex task bearing in mind that there are at least seven major factions in the Taleban and that last time Mr Karzai tried to hold a “peace jurga” it became the intended target of a failed plot by the Taleban hardliners.

Assuming that the Taleban involved in the current preliminary talks with the US are genuine representatives of the leadership, what should be the peace aims of the US and its Nato allies? The bottom line should be that the Taleban must pledge to cut all its links with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, refuse to allow any terrorist safe havens and training bases to be re-established in territory under Taleban control and uphold basic human rights of men and women. These objectives are an essential part of the international effort to suppress the al-Qaeda network of jihadi terrorists, a network that remains a threat despite the death of bin Laden at the hands of the US Special Forces.

Our brave soldiers have been fighting to prevent Afghanistan reverting to a base for jihadi terrorism. Their mission has the endorsement of the UN Security Council. Our leaders owe it to them to settle for nothing less than a peace with honour, not a peace at any price.

To date there is no publicly available evidence that the Taleban leadership has the political will to initiate and sustain an effective peace process. This does not men that efforts to build the conditions for an honourable peace should be abandoned. It does mean that the withdrawal of troops should be “conditions-based”, not fixed to a predetermined date.

As military chiefs in the US and the UK have been warning, a premature withdrawal of Nato troops carries the risk that the Taleban will regain territory so hard-won by our soldiers. Military pressures will play a vital part in bringing an end to the insurgency, but they need to be backed up by determined political will and public support. In any acceptable peace settlement political advances must go hand in hand with adequate safeguards to meet the security concerns and fears of both parties to the conflict.

l Paul Wilkinson is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews