The July deadline for the beginning of a drawdown of American troops from Afghanistan is looming, and the debate in Washington is increasingly focused now on how reconciliation and reintegration efforts will affect the long-term peace process. Experts from Capitol Hill, Kabul and Washington think tanks gathered at USIP on June 13 to discuss how to build a “durable peace” in Afghanistan.
June 14, 2011
RECONCILIATION IN AFGHANISTAN – The July deadline for the beginning of a drawdown of American troops from Afghanistan is looming, and the debate in Washington is increasingly focused now on how reconciliation and reintegration efforts will affect the long-term peace process. The U.S. has long maintained that a peace plan must be the result of an Afghan-led effort. But a new report co-sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace and the Peace Research Institute Oslo says Afghans want the U.S. to play a major role because of its control over the bulk of forces operating there.
“The Taliban demand for full withdrawal prior to talks appears to be an opening position,” concluded report author Hamish Nixon. “A challenge will be linking a structure for drawdown to necessary steps by insurgents to allow a cessation of violence and prevent Afghanistan’s use for terrorism.” Transition, said Vikram Singh, the State Department’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, “is not going to be a transition to an exit…it won’t work if the U.S. and the international community don’t stay committed.”
EXPERTS TALK HOW – Singh and a dozen other experts from Capitol Hill, Kabul and Washington think tanks gathered at USIP on June 13 to discuss how to build a “durable peace” in Afghanistan. And there is broad recognition that any peace plan will have to accommodate the regional powers – India and Pakistan – as well as the international ones.
Ali Jalali, a former Minister of Interior of Afghanistan, said peace can be achieved if Afghans are truly confident that their country won’t soon disintegrate into “a chaotic society.” Regional powers, he said, must also understand that the international community will remain there: “It depends on what the partnership is going to be,” he said.
INDIA: CHANGE THE STRATEGIC CALCULUS? – Ashley Tellis from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said India’s objective remains the same: “To make sure Afghanistan never returns to the old ways, and two, that whatever happens, Kabul retains its independence.” India, which has provided aid to Afghanistan, continues to make Pakistan nervous, and India has yet to see Pakistan make the “strategic shift” away from eastern border worries on the Indian-Pakistan border. So for now, one should assume that the India-Pakistan relationship will not change substantively, he said. “India and Pakistani relations are likely to continue to be antagonistic,” he said.
PAKISTAN’S DEMANDS – USIP’s Moeed Yusuf said Pakistan remains concerned about an “overly hostile” government in Kabul. “There are a lot of concerns that Pakistan has that have to be addressed, from Pakistan’s objective,” Yusuf said. But the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a positive thing, he noted. “Pakistan recognizes that the U.S. in Afghanistan is a good thing for them.”
IS THE RECONCILIATION STRATEGY ON TRACK? – Panelists generally agreed that the two processes, reconciliation with insurgent leaders, and the reintegration of low-level insurgents, can and must occur at the same time. But a primary topic of concern is whether the timing of the withdrawal of American forces – whatever the number is – should be coordinated with those very reconciliation and reintegration efforts. “Reintegration is moving slowly,” said Nixon. “It doesn’t address the U.S. control over the pace or timing or withdrawal of forces, and it doesn’t address at the national or local level the governance piece.”
The Center for New American Security’s Andrew Exum said he worries about the “lack of strategic guidance on the ground” in Afghanistan. The military being the military, it will go forward as best as it can despite that lack of strategic guidance – but that means that the military operations drive the strategy rather than the other way around. Others wonder if the military is taking reconciliation seriously in the first place. And reconciliation, said Fatema Sumar, professional staff member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has to be tied to a military strategy. “I think it’s increasingly clear that reconciliation is not going to be a silver bullet – it will be messy, it will be complicated, and it is increasingly clear it has to be linked to a military strategy on the ground.”
WHAT’S ‘PLAN B’? – Some experts fear that there are few alternatives if the peace process fails, and it will be too late to switch course. “If the reconciliation process that we hope for were to fail, that process would become clear long after the U.S. has pulled out the bulk of its forces,” said Tellis.