OPINION:
Ambassador Ryan Crocker is one of America’s foremost experts on Afghanistan and he is worried about the current state of negotiations between the Taliban and U.S. representatives regarding a ceasefire in the Afghan conflict. He believes that we are heading toward a bad agreement, and we would do well to heed his misgivings. That doesn’t mean that we should break off negotiations, but it does mean that we should be careful about how we proceed, and that the Congress should be part of any peace agreement.
The ambassador is concerned with two things based on some hard experiences in foreign affairs in the past 50 years. First, during the Paris Peace talks that eventually ended American involvement in Vietnam, it was generally recognized that the North Vietnamese would resume the war against the South Vietnamese once the Americans were safely gone. That is exactly what happened.
In fairness to President Nixon and his chief negotiator, Henry Kissinger, they believed that they retained the option to use air and naval power to punish the North if it blatantly resumed offensive operations. What Nixon’s team did not anticipate was the full impact of Watergate. Once Nixon was forced out of office and the Democrats took control of Congress in 1974, they refused to fund any military action against Hanoi when fighting resumed in 1975. This doomed South Vietnam. Mr. Crocker is also concerned that putting a timeline on American withdrawal — such as the one President Obama placed on Iraq — will give us no further leverage over the Taliban; that would be tragic.
The ambassador’s second concern is that any agreement that does not protect the gains made by Afghan women will be an unconscionable sell out of half of Afghanistan’s population. Both concerns are legitimate, and the American negotiators should recognize them.
Regarding bad faith on the part of the Taliban, we should assume that it is a given. Anyone who believes that the Taliban have abandoned their goal of regaining control of the whole country is gullible at best. Congress sold South Vietnam down the river in 1975 and its members were never held accountable. This Congress should pass a resolution vowing to authorize renewed U.S. military action if and when the Taliban violates any peace agreement. For years, Congress has abrogated its war powers responsibility while whining that successive presidents have overstepped their national security authority. This is an opportunity for our congressional representatives to do their jobs for once.
Ambassador Crocker has also expressed concern that the Taliban will overrun the whole country when the Americans leave. I think he’s wrong there. The government is strong in the urban areas and those that can be reached by the limited road network. If the war resumes post-cease fire, the current stalemate will continue. However, we can — and should — continue to train and equip the security forces; this can be done remotely. It is very feasible to airlift entire Afghan battalions to the United States to train in rotations at the National Training Center at Fort Polk Louisiana. Quite frankly, we should have done this years ago. It is difficult to properly train an army while it is engaged in combat. Congress can and should provide such funding, which would be much cheaper than having American trainers in Afghanistan.
In addition, Congress should demand that the Afghan government be part of any negotiated settlement. The notion that the majority of the Afghan people do not support the government is pure Taliban propaganda.
Finally, any agreement should — at a minimum — allow women and others to leave Taliban-controlled territory if they so desire. Final American withdrawal should be contingent on a period when passage of lines is allowed for those who want to leave Taliban-controlled territory to do so. Conversely, those Afghans who want to live under the kind of fundamentalist Sharia law that the Taliban impose on the territory that they control should also be able to cross the lines. We have to be realistic enough to understand that many Afghan women are perfectly happy living in the 14th century and will want to stay put. Thousands of years of tribal customs and centuries of fundamentalist Islamic conservatism die hard. The best outcome would be one where people have a choice of how they want to live.
It is probably too much to hope that the Afghan Civil War will end with a peace as enduring as those in El Salvador or Rwanda, but it is worth a try.
• Gary Anderson served as a civilian advisor in Afghanistan and Iraq. He lectures on Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.