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Taliban talks must focus on Pakistan diplomacy

By Channel 4 News

Updated on 21 July 2010

We must spare no efforts to negotiate with the weaker "ten dollar Taliban", as well as ramping up diplomatic efforts with Pakistan to strike out at the extremists, writes Colonel Richard Kemp, former head of COBRA and the intelligence committee.

Pakistani soldiers: Taliban talks must focus on Pakistan diplomacy (Image: Getty)

Colonel Richard Kemp is former chairman of the COBRA Intelligence Group and Head of International Terrorism for the Joint Intelligence Committee. He is also the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan.  

In its most often used sense the word "Taliban" is shorthand for a diverse patchwork of groups and individuals who violently oppose President Karzai's government and the Nato forces in Afghanistan that support it.
 
Their motives are also wide-ranging: protection of the narcotics industry, which itself thrives on instability; maintaining the interests of warlords and tribal leaders; organised crime and gangsters; inter-tribal, family, village or individual feuding; resistance to foreign presence or the presence of military and police from different parts of the country or different ethnicity.
 
The Taliban movement itself, however, is an extreme Islamist fundamentalist organisation, led by Mullah Omar from across the border in Pakistan.

Taliban talks: breaking Afghanistan's iron curtain
"You cannot walk into a Taliban office or approach their political wing – there are none. They practice a sort of iron curtain, ensuring that Taliban commanders keep their distance from anyone associated with government", writes Michael Semple, expert on Taliban negotiations and former EU head of Mission in Kabul - Semple was expelled from Afghanistan following allegations he had made contact with the Taliban.

"When it is important for an official to meet face to face with a Taliban commander there is generally an elaborate process of introductions and guarantees through trusted acquaintances. The Taliban commander needs reassurance he will not be arrested or exposed and the government or international representative needs guarantees that they will not be harmed.

"But even more than mutual security concerns, the introductions and checks which both sides conduct before meetings are important to establish credentials. Both sides need to know they are talking to the right people. Checking has to weed out the spoofs. However all of these barriers have to be overcome if any meaningful dialogue is to take place."

Read Michael Semple's article in full here


This hard-core element controlled most of Afghanistan until they were ejected by US forces and the Northern Alliance in 2001. It is their fervent intent to throw out the foreign forces, bring down the Kabul government and take over control of as much of the country as they are able.
 
The Taliban uses many Afghan locals, often known as "ten dollar Taliban", as well as their followers from Pakistan. They are also supported in their struggle by Al Qaida fighters and by jihadists from across the globe including the United Kingdom. 
 
We and the government of Afghanistan must spare no efforts to negotiate with those elements of the wider "Taliban" that are prepared to engage with us. We should be ready to use financial incentives, alternative livelihoods, political favours and pretty much whatever else it takes to persuade them to give up the fight and where appropriate to go over to the government side.
 
This will weaken the insurgency, splitting away those who have no strong ideological opposition to the Karzai regime or to Nato and in some cases depriving the hard-core Taliban of their hired guns. It may also involve abandoning - for the time being at least - our efforts at poppy irradiation. So be it: for the present tackling the insurgency takes a very clear priority over dealing with poppy.
 
While seeking to negotiate with these elements of the insurgency we must unceasingly attack the hard-core Taliban using every legitimate means at our disposal. Any attempt to negotiate with them will be rejected out of hand and will be seen as a sign of our weakness which will serve only to encourage them in their resistance to us.
 
Mullah Omar's Taliban will not negotiate with us except to accept our surrender in whatever form that might take. They are implacably opposed to our values and the agenda of the Karzai government.

They believe - not without justification - that they are winning this war. Their fundamentalist ideology is unequivocal in a way that Western leaders - so fond of compromise, rational appeasement and accommodation - fail to comprehend. They will prevail on their absolute terms - or perish trying.
 
Instead of dreams about coming to an arrangement with the Taliban we should focus our diplomatic efforts on Pakistan.

More Channel 4 News on talking to the Taliban:
- Taliban talks: breaking Afghanistan's iron curtain
- Will Afghan women suffer in a Taliban deal?
- Jonathan Rugman's blog on the Taliban talks story
- Afghan plan to 'reintegrate' the Taliban

Various elements of the Pakistani government support the Taliban, most notably the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate and sections of the all-powerful Army. The extent to which this support is directed, sanctioned or simply ignored by the top echelons of the government is a matter for debate.
 
But wherever Pakistani government support begins or ends, without it the Taliban would be unable to maintain the insurgency at current levels.
 
Anybody who has any doubt about the pressing need to weaken and break the insurgency in Afghanistan need look no further than North West Pakistan for a foretaste of what the Taliban have in mind for Afghanistan.
 
In a border region about 400 kilometres long, the Pakistani Taliban, increasingly linked to their Afghan counterparts, have progressively enslaved millions of people.

They have killed tribal and village leaders who will not accept their brutal authority. They have burned down schools and banned the education of girls.

They have denied countless women of an official existence, depriving them of vital state aid. They have humiliated, mutilated and executed all who stand in their way or who fail to bow to their mediaeval edicts.
 
The Pakistani Taliban has forged ever closer links with Al Qaida in this region, a relationship that is being increasingly replicated across the border in Afghanistan. They are as intent on bringing down the government in Islamabad as their Afghan bedfellows are of destroying the government in Kabul.
 
Should we permit Afghanistan to again succumb to the rule of the Taliban, we would consign the long-suffering Afghan people to its horrific rule and allow the country to again become the centre of international terrorism.

A Taliban controlled Afghanistan would also support the insurgency in Pakistan, bringing us closer to the apocalyptic prospect of a nuclear-armed state in the hands of extremists.

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