Flipping the Taliban: How to Win in Afghanistan

After years of the Bush administration's neglect and mismanagement of Afghanistan, President Barack Obama was prompt in ordering the deployment of 21,000 more U.S. troops.

Yet although sending more troops is necessary to tip the balance of power against the insurgents, the move will have a lasting impact only if it is accompanied by a political "surge," a committed effort to persuade large groups of Taliban fighters to put down their arms and give up the fight.

The idea that large groups of armed men bent on killing Americans and other Westerners can be persuaded to change sides may seem fanciful at first. But it is not -- at least not in Afghanistan.

After continuing uninterrupted for more than 30 years, war in Afghanistan has developed its own peculiar rules, style, and logic. One of these rules is to side with the winner. Afghan commanders are not cogs in a military machine but the guardians of specific interests -- the interests of the fighters pledged to them and of the tribal, religious, or political groups from which these men are recruited. In a war that drags on, changing camps to the winning side means living and holding on to power, as well as saving one's family and one's village. Changing sides, realigning, flipping--whatever one wants to call it -- is the Afghan way of war.

So far, Afghan leaders and their U.S. backers have made only halfhearted, ill-funded, and largely futile efforts to exploit the willingness of Taliban commanders to switch sides. Reconciliation with the Taliban has never been a sufficiently high priority for the Karzai government or Washington for either to put in place a coherent strategy encouraging defections from among the movement. But a focused campaign to win the cooperation of significant elements within the Taliban can succeed.

One important step is for the Afghan government to tailor its approach to the needs of the fighters. A well-organized reconciliation program would have to offer substitutes for all the benefits that membership in an insurgent network brings: comradeship, security, a livelihood, and respectability. Another important element of a reconciliation strategy will be to recognize the needs of each group, zeroing in on their particular characteristics: their tribal links, their traditions, the special conditions under which they function.

Any initiative to approach these groups should be spearheaded by interlocutors who have both credibility inside the Afghan establishment in Kabul and ties to insurgent networks. The trick will be to engage a critical mass of local commanders simultaneously. This vision of reconciliation concerns itself not so much with getting foot soldiers to lay down their arms as with building alliances with commanders and their troops.

The core rationale for the current NATO mission in Afghanistan is to ensure that the Afghan authorities can prevent the Taliban's al Qaeda allies from exploiting Afghanistan as a base for terrorist operations. If they want to extricate themselves from the insurgency and become part of Afghanistan's new deal, Taliban commanders will have to demonstrate that they have broken with al Qaeda. As a tradeoff and to create an incentive for the insurgents to cooperate, the U.S. government and its allies should gradually hand over responsibility for the country's security to the Afghan national forces. Commanders and fighters should be formally associated with or absorbed into the police or the army, for example, which would allow the foreign troops to slip into the background.

And like it or not, the leaders, commanders, recruiters, financiers, and families of those running the Afghan insurgency are predominantly based in Pakistan. Thus, a process of reconciliation based on accommodation with key networks of commanders within the insurgency -- rather than with the whole of the Taliban leadership or the movement's foot soldiers -- would have to start in Pakistan, where these networks are most accessible. Now that U.S.-Afghan-Pakistani relations are being recalibrated, Washington is on the lookout for ideas about how Pakistan could do more to support progress in Afghanistan. Pakistan's backing of a low-profile political dialogue, even one that yielded only an agreement not to disrupt the process, would open up a whole new field of possibilities.

The Obama administration and its Afghan counterparts will have to get many things right in order to salvage Afghanistan.

Reconciliation with Afghan insurgents is one important component of any new successful strategy. President Karzai has pledged his personal support for reconciliation, but given his diminished personal standing and the mounting uncertainty about the future of his leadership, significant progress is unlikely unless he changes his policies or a new president is elected with the authority to cut credible deals. And given that corruption, arbitrary detentions, and factionalized local governance have helped drive so many people to join the armed resistance, progress is only likely where such predatory behavior can be reined in.

Finally, only if the United States' military surge can demonstrably stem the insurgents' influence in Pashtun areas will militants there start to believe that they might be able to stay alive if they realign with the government. But time is short, and effective engagement with the Taliban could mean the difference between a protracted, unwinnable conflict and a pragmatic solution acceptable to both Washington and its Afghan allies.

Fotini Christia is Assistant Professor of Political Science at MIT. Michael Semple is a regional specialist focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan, with extensive experience dialoguing with the Taliban.

Copyright Council on Foreign Relations, publisher of Foreign Affairs. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services.

Available at Amazon.com:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal?: Avoiding the Chain of Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Organization

Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results

Flipping the Taliban: How to Win in Afghanistan