Pakistan remains a land ravaged by violence

More than 10,000 people were killed and another 10,000 were injured in political violence in Pakistan last year, according to figures released by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. These figures include deaths and injuries as a result of insurgent and terrorist attacks, security force operations, drone strikes, inter-tribal attacks and cross-broder attacks.

They also confirm that Pakistan remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world, despite a fall in incidents since the previous year.
The worst affected areas were Baluchistan (737 attacks) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (720 attacks), followed by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (459 attacks).
Overall, violent incidents decreased in 2010 for the first time since 2007. Fatalities also fell from 12,623 in 2009 to 10,003 in 2010, while injuries fell by a similar proportion. Suicide attacks fell from 87 in 2009 to 68 in 2010, almost half of which occurred in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Deaths resulting from US drone attacks rose by 165 per cent in 2010 to 961, most of which occurred in North Waziristan.
The number of terrorist attacks throughout Pakistan decreased by 21 per cent compared to 2009, although attacks by militants in FATA increased by 28 per cent and fatalities from such attacks in the tribal areas increased by 40 per cent and injuries by 37 per cent. While law enforcement personnel were the target of 105 attacks in 2009, this figure rose to 144 attacks in 2010. Attacks on political leaders rose from 7 in 2009 to 34 in 2010.
The number of civilians killed in 2010 was 3,570 in 2010, compared to 3,476 in 209, but security personnel deaths fell by half from 2,515 in 2009 to 1,211 in 2010.

Reassessing Afghanistan's media

Nine years after the fall of the Taliban, argue the authors of a new report, dreams of a free and independent media sector in Afghanistan go unrealised. It is time, they say, to reassess the media landscape and reevaluate how media can best be employed as a tool for peacebuilding.
Afghanistan Media Assessment: Opportunities and Challenges for Peacebuilding, published by the US Institute for Peace and written by Eran Fraenkel, Emrys Schoemaker and Sheldon Himelfarb, says the media in Afghanistan should serve as an interlocutor between the historically antagonistic centre and the periphery of the country. It argues that although millions has been spent on media by international donors, the two main goals of counteracting insurgent communications and creating a free and independent media sector have not been met.
Donors should henceforth invest primarily in the production and dissemination of socially constructive content, rather than building media institutions that the economy cannot support and should also make multi-year funding commitments, even if institutions do not become self-sustaining.
The US and its allies should coordinate their media support strategies and the military should restructure its media activities to avoid excessive financial and editorial interference.
The authors recommend a number of specific media interventions, including a TV or radio drama based on the experiences of Afghan returnees, a reality TV show based on an all-Afghan youth cricket team, a TV documentary series showing how some communities have solved problems, a radio satire that examines the role of rumours and provides solutions through audience participation, an investigative and participatory radio talk show and a radio show that broadcasts the deliberations of shuras (community councils).
These are all interesting ideas, although it is by no means certain that they would be welcomed by an Afghan audience or pull in large numbers of viewers and listeners. Or that there are sufficient numbers of well-trained and talented technicians and writers in Afghanistan to make these interventions successful. As the Afghan media organisations mature, commercial pressures (and politics) are likely to be the most important arbiters of Afghan tastes. Although around 100 people were interviewed for this report, what is now needed is a much more in-depth survey of Afghan audience perceptions and preferences.
Ironically, this may help explain why the Taliban has been so successful in its media strategy. Despite producing entirely fictitious battle reports for years and failing all the 'truth and accuracy' tests,  the overall message it delivers of Islamic justice as a solution to the country's woes continues to exert a powerful influence. 

A few reports you may have missed...

Defining success in Afghanistan by Frederick W Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, A report by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War .
The Kagans define success as "the establishment of a political order, security situation, and indigenous security force that is stable, viable, enduring, and able—with greatly reduced international support—to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for international terrorists." They argue that military forces are making progress and that policy does not need changing much. They say that the Taliban has lost almost all of its momentum and main safe havens in the south and that locals are now stepping forward to fight the Taliban with ISAF support. In the East insurgents do not have much momentum and they are extremely unlikely to gain strength in the north. "From a military standpoint, the counterinsurgency is going reasonably well, insofar as it is possible to judge over the winter." The main test, they say, will come in late summer 2011 when the insurgency is expected to peak.

A New Deal: a plan for sustainable Afghan Stability by Bijan R Kian and Wayne Porter of the New America Foundation argues that it is time to transition from "foreign-funded, Afghan-assisted development to a sustainable "Afghan-funded, foreign-assisted programme that reduces corruption. Drawing on parallels between the United States in 1933 and present-day Afghanistan, they suggest setting up an Afghan Development Corps of young Afghans to work on project such as water, sewage and sanitation, reforestation and land management.

Strategies to Counter Opiate Production in Afghanistan: Are we on the right track? is produced by URD, the French government's development agency. They conclude that "Though slow, practices are changing and there is growing recognition that there is no one replacement crop, nor any one “alternative” form of development, but that only holistic socio-economic and political development will make it possible to reduce dependence on opium poppy cultivation in a sustainable manner."

How to find Sarah Lee (Mitcham): Step 3

A quick check on a commercially available database confirms that Sarah Lee (b. 4 Nov 1965) also uses the aliases: Sarah Hel Mitcham, Sarah L Mitcham, Sarah Murrell Mitcham, Sarah Helen Lee and Sarah H Mitchan. Such a lot of aliases! Albany, Oregon looks like a pretty good bet for her present location.

How to find Sarah Lee: Step 2

Sarah Helen Lee married Dennis Murrell Mitcham (b1957) in February 1985. They have two children who are now in their mid-twenties and whose names are in the public domain. I guess this means that Sarah Lee, Sarah Helen Lee and Sarah Lee Mitcham are one and the same person. Both Dennis and Sarah now appear to live in Isleton, California or perhaps in Albany, Oregon. How hard did the US Army try to find Ms Lee (Mitcham)?

How to find Sarah Lee: Step 1

The Excluded Parties List System, provided as a free service by the US General Services Administration, includes information regarding entities debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment, excluded or disqualified under the non-procurement common rule, or otherwise declared ineligible from receiving Federal contracts, certain subcontracts, and certain Federal assistance and benefits.
Therefore it should come as no surprise to see that it contains information about the two companies, Bennett-Fouch Associates and K5 Global, that were suspended from US army contracts recently (see below) for failing to pay their Afghan subcontractors.
According to the EPLS website, Bennett & Fouch Associates of 1805 Florence Road, Ste 9, Killeen, Texas and K5 Global of 329 Bob Moore Rd, Anacoco, Louisiana, were entered onto the list on 27 December 2010 for an indefinite period.
Also added at the same time were Gary Brandon of Dallas, Texas, Sarah Helen Lee of Anacoco, Louisiana and Sarah Lee Mitcham, also of Anacoco (who may or may not be the same person as Sarah Helen Lee). According to the 2003 Alumnus magazine of Northwestern State University of Louisana Susan H Lee Mitcham was an emergency room Registered Nurse at Christus Jasper Memorial Hospital in Texas and lived in Anacoco.
Interestingly, Anacoco has a population of only around 756, so it should not be too difficult for anyone to find Ms Lee if she is still there. The US Army said in a statement last week that it had been unable to find Ms Lee since she skipped Afghanistan last year without paying her bills. She is alleged to be the owner of the two companies.
Perhaps they may have better luck if they check out Fort Polk, just a few miles away, an army base that happens to be home to the Joint Readiness Training Center, the 4th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division and the 162nd Infantry Brigade? It presently provides contingency training for the Army's light infantry and special forces before deployment to Afghanistan. It is in the process of doubling its 100,000-acre training area, much of which is in the Kisatchie National Forest. I feel sure Ms Lee has the odd contact or two on the base.

What Afghans think about the military campaign in Kandahar

Only rarely does one come across documents that accurately reflect the opinion of ordinary Afghans about the war that is being fought on their doorstep. Thus, the second Afghan Voices paper published by Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy is to be welcomed.
Entitled How Afghans View Coalition Military Operations in Kandahar, the paper is written by Zabih Ullah - an Afghan journalist who was born in Kandahar, but chooses not to use his real name. He argues that most Afghans do not regard the prospects for Coalition success as very high. Discussions with villagers and residents of Kandahar reveal that most believe the military campaign will end in failure. "Many Kandaharis have come to believe that Coalition military operations result only in the death, injury, arrest and dishonouring of innocent Afghan civilians who have nothing to do with the Taliban", he says.
At the same time, they don't want the Coalition forces to leave and say they could play a more positive role in rebuilding the shattered country.
Zabih Ullah gives five reasons who the Coalition military campaign is failing: the Taliban can find sanctuary in Pakistan; they learn quickly from their mistakes, for example, avoiding head-on clashes with Coalition troops, which they know they cannot win; some Coalition tactics, such as night raids, are counter-productive. "For a Pashtun it is almost better to be killed rather than to be dishonoured by having foreign soldiers in his house at night"; Coalition strategy changes constantly, as do the messages being communicated to locals; the failure of Coalition forces to keep their word and stay in the villages they secure for the long term.
Zabih Ullah says that if there is one over-riding reason why locals have little confidence in US-led operations in Kandahar, "it is the continued failure of American and Coalition forces to understand local context and dynamics and the impact of their stalled operations on the local population." Some excellent observations in this short, but timely report.
Details of the first paper in this series, written by Wazhma Frogh on the subject of the Afghan government's plans for reconciliation and reintegration, can be found here.

US military aid to Pakistan continues to rise

Two reports from the Congressional Research Service, published by the Federation of American Scientists, update the picture on American aid to Pakistan since 2001. A one-page summary of Direct Overt US Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2011 shows that since 2001 the total declared amount provided to Pakistan (there is also substantial covert aid) reached $19.595 billion. From this figure, $13.305bn paid for security-related items. The largest annual aid package came in 2010, when it totalled $4.347bn.
A second paper entitled Major US Arms Sales and Grants to Pakistan since 2001 notes that most purchases by Pakistan have been made with Pakistani national funds, but these purchases have been eclipsed in recent years by purchases funded by US grants.
Foreign Military Sales agreements with Pakistan for FY2002-FY2010 totalled about $5.4bn, with sales of F-16 combat aircraft and related equipment accounting for more than half of this.
Major post-2001 defence supplies provided under US Foreign Military Financing include:
* eight P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, of which two have been delivered so far;
* about 6,312 TOW anti-amour missiles;
* more than 5,600 military radio sets;
* six AN?TPS-77 surveillnace radars;
* six C-130E transport aircraft;
* one ex-Oliver Hazard Perry class missle frigate;
* 20 AH-1F Cobra attack helicopters;
* 121 refurbished TOW missile launchers.
Pakistan itself paid for 18 new F-16C/D Block 50/52 combat aircaft, (of which 17 have been delivered), 500 air-to-air missiles, 1450 2000-lb bombs, 100 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, 500 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and six Phalanx Close-in Weapons System naval guns.
Major transfers under the Excess Defense Articles programme include 14 F16A/B combat aircraft, 59 T-37 military trainer jets and 550 M-113 amoured personnel carriers.
Under various other programmes Pakistan has also received 26 Bell 412 utility helicopters, four Mi-17 multi-role helicopters, two King Air 350 surveillance aircraft, 450 vehicles for the Frontier Corps and huge amounts of equipment such as body armour, helmets, first aid kits, night vision devices, etc.
All-in-all, more than enough to launch a major military operation into North Waziristan.

SIGAR decides to get tough

Fields - Tough guy or pussy cat?

Is Arnold Fields, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, getting tough at last? On Tuesday he announced that the leaders of the organisation's Audits Directorate and the Investigations Directorate were being replaced, to take the agency "in a new, increasingly aggressive direction". With contractors like Sarah Lee of Bennett-Fouch getting away with not paying Afghan subcontractors, (see below), it's about time.
Update: On Tuesday 11 Jan, Fields - a former soldier - resigned his post, effective from 4 Feb 2011. This followed Congressional pressure on President Obama to sack him for incompetence and mismanagement.

US companies run from Afghan creditors

Rather late in the day the US military has suspended contracting privileges to two companies in Afghanistan over allegations they failed to pay their Afghan subcontractors. According to a statement from Coalition forces, several Afghan companies have brought allegations of nonpayment against Bennett-Fouch Associates and K5 Global, both of which are owned by a 45-year-old American woman named Sarah Lee. "The failure of firms to pay their local national workforce or local national subcontractors adversely affects counterinsurgency strategy," the coalition said in the statement.
Bennett-Fouch appears to have lied when it told local Afghan contractors last spring that it could not pay them because it had not been paid by the US government."In reality", the Coalition statement said, "the U.S. government had paid Bennett-Fouch for the work on the construction projects." In April last year the company had closed its local offices and bank accounts in Afghanistan and had left the country owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills.
According to one report, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry was told about Sarah Lee's companies at an event in Kabul in June and promised in public to solve the problem. Nothing further happened until the announcement this week. What has now happened is that the US Army will investigate the claims from creditors and not award any further work to the two companies until it has reviewed the evidence. This could take up to 18 months.
Lee's companies seem to be involved in basic construction work in Afghanistan, such as building sewers, although in Iraq they were also involved in building a radio station and selling airtime for advertising to the US Army, as well as supplying generators and other items of equipment.
However, since reneging on payments in Afghanistan last spring, 45 year-old Sarah Lee appears to have gone to ground. The Coalition statement says "The US government attempted to contact Bennett-Fouch without success to address these allegations in connection with construction contracts at military bases in Afghanistan." Remarkable that the US government could not find the woman behind this alleged scam. Has it issued an arrest warrant? Checked her home address?

The Coalition statement acknowledges the obvious fact that treating Afghan creditors so shabbily will only strengthen the insurgency and confirm the worst attitudes of Afghans towards foreigners. Perhaps the US Army investigators will understand that fact and deliver some justice to the Afghans who are owed money by Lee's companies.
If anyone has a picture of Ms Lee or can help with any contact details, I would be delighted to offer them to a wider audience.

'Remarkable gains' in Helmand - report

The second of Jeffrey Dressler's two reports on Helmand for the Institute for the Study of War argues that US Marines and Coalition forces have made "remarkable gains" in the province by taking back key terrain previously controlled by the Taliban.(The first report can be found here).
Dressler argues that Taliban supply lines have been disrupted, that safe havens and support zones have largely been removed and that the Taliban has been forced out of the main populated areas in Garmser, Nawa, Marjah and Nad Ali.
As a result, Taliban-initiated violence have fallen considerably since its peak in 2009. In Marjah, for example, daily security incidents have dropped from several dozen to single digits. While the 215th Corps of the Afghan National Army has improved with mentoring, police were found to be so predatory that tribal elders have helped in the recruitment of indigenous police who more accurately represent the local tribal makeup.
The military action has successfully disrupted the narcotics trade, with estimates that insurgents received around 50 per cent less money from the Helmand drug trade in 2010 compared to 2009, resulting in a cash flow problem for them.
Problems remain, says Dressler, including political interference from allies of President Karzai and also a lack of capable civil servants.
Reconstruction projects have helped attract local support for the government, with around 4,000 people employed each day. Schools and healthcare facilities have been built. Furthermore, 71 percent of Helmand residents currently describe their living conditions as "good," an increase of 27 percent since late last year. Of those surveyed, 59 percent give positive marks to the availability of jobs, up nearly 50 percent from last year.

State's low priority for Afghanistan prior to 9/11

Dr Marvin Weinbaum served from 1999-2003 as a State Department analyst for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. In August 2003 he gave an interview in the form of a memorandum for the record to members of the State Department Counterterrorism team, presumably at the point when he left State to take up a new job at the Middle East Institute.
The now declassified memo has been published on the Cryptome website and should be read by anyone interested in US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The four-page redacted memo succinctly spells out the major errors made by US policy makers as the Taliban took power in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda cemented its relations with Mullah Omar.
Weinbaum says Pakistan was willing to back whoever would bring order to Afghanistan and at various times gave money to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and to the notorious General Dostum. He argues that the Taliban was not created by Pakistan, rather that it caught the eye of policy makers after a number of victories in Kandahar and elsewhere.
He notes that Osama bin Laden (UBL) and the Arabs had a strong connection with the Afghans, but that they were not very popular with the average Afghan: "When UBL returned in 1996, he is not viewed as a hero; rather he is viewed as a source of cash," explains the memo, adding that eventually the Taliban under Mullah Omar became financially dependent on bin Laden and the relationship was later cemented by marriages between the families of the two leaders. The money came from wealthy Arabs who donated to Arab charities based in Peshawar and Kandahar.
Meanwhile, from 1989 to 1998 Afghanistan remained a low priority for the State Department. The threat from the Taliban was not appreciated, with some officials arguing that they should be "given a chance". At that time oil company Unocal was discussing its proposed pipeline from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean with State: "Weinbaum opines that while Unocal was not a driving force in setting policy, the Department definitely heard them out."
With the arrival of new officials in 1998, policy began to change, particularly after the attacks on US embassies in East Africa and after Pakistan's nuclear tests. The main US policy for Afghanistan now became the expulsion of bin Laden. While Counterterrorism Coordinator Michael Sheehan argued for sanctions, Weinbaum believed this policy would push the Taliban closer to bin Laden.Instead he supported the idea of financing development in the north as a way of discrediting the Taliban and their claims of progress. However, this policy was not followed because the Northern Alliance at that time was perceived as being pro-Iranian.
Weinbaum says that engaging with the Taliban was not easy and that the more moderate wing around Mullah Rabbani could never hope to deliver bin Laden to the Americans: "Weinbaum doesn't even think Omar would have traded UBL to the US in return for American recognition. We had very little leverage here."
Nor did pressure on Pakistan work, not least because the US had distanced itself from Islamabad after the nuclear tests.
Weinbaum ends by saying that as al-Qaeda mounted its momentous attacks on America there was very little expertise on Afghanistan within the State Department: "Weinbaum says that on 9/11, he was the only person in State who had lived in Afghanistan."

UN Secretary General outlines worsening security situation

A report to the UN Security Council by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, covering the period since mid-September paints yet another grim picture of the political and military situation in Afghanistan. During the reporting period the number of security incidents was 66 per cent higher than during the same period in 2009, with violence peaking on polling day and decreasing thereafter.
Despite significant pressure on the insurgents, "anti-Government elements were able to sustain high levels of activity in areas into which they had recently expanded, particularly in the north and the north-east, where the international military presence is less dense."
Suicide attacks averaged three per week and UN facilities in Herat also came under attack, although no staff were injured and all the attackers were killed. It was the third attack against UN premises in three years. The Taliban justified the attack by saying that the UN had voted to extend the mandate of the ISAF forces and had also reported "inaccurately" on civilian casualties carried out by the Taliban.
The Secretary General uses the report to inform the Security Council about progress in reconciliation through the High Peace Council, on handing over responsibility for security to the Afghan forces, on relations with Pakistan and other neighbouring countries, on the Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan held in Istanbul in November, on the Kabul Silk Road initiative and on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
However his report noted that "The continuing deterioration of the security situation has inhibited the implementation of development projects and limited access for humanitarian activities." This in turn has increased the demand for humanitarian assistance.
The report states that anti-government elements were responsible for the deaths and injuries of 4,738 civilians - 76 per cent of the total, during the reporting period. Suicide and IED attacks caused most civilians casualties (998 deaths and 2.062 injuries). In the same period there were 742 civilian casualties due to pro-government forces. Of these, 162 deaths and 120 injuries were due to aerial attacks ie Coalition bombs.
UNAMA also recorded 403 assassinations and executions of government supporters and 219 abductions during the reporting period. This was an increase of 107 per cent on the same period last year. More than half the assassinations occurred in the south of the country.

Justice is 'key battleground of the insurgency' - report

Justice is fundamental to stability in Afghanistan, yet the Afghan government and its international partners have generally treated it as a secondary issue, according to a new Chatham House report.
No Shortcut to Stability: Justice, Politics and Insurgency in Afghanistan  by Stephen Carter and Kate Clark argues that lack of justice is the key common element underlying much of the weakness of the Afghan state and is the most important political driver of the conflict.
They cite a Taliban supporter in Wardak province, who tells them: "Imagine: a district police chief was assigned by Kabul – and the police under him were robbers. They plundered and looted and raided people’s houses ... People became angry and, to take revenge, they stood against him and his group. The Taliban used this opportunity …Our district is all Taliban now. The people support them."
While other factors such as money, drugs and foreign interference also drive the insurgency, case studies from several provinces illustrate the centrality of justice in determining attitudes towards the state.
Carter and Clark say that the Taliban has exploited the justice deficit to the full, playing on the deep desire of Afghans for security and the rule of law, even for the "harsh, but just" Taliban justice that existed prior to 2001. And while the military pay lip service to the need for justice, it was the decisions taken in 2001 to finance and arm factional militias to defeat the Taliban that layed the ground for the judicial abuses that have become rampant since then.
Ordinary Afghans have watched as these warlords have received valuable contracts for security and logistics and have blamed the foreigners as much as the strongmen for their woes.
While the military forces have seen it as expedient to ignore injustice, the Afghan government has taken decisions which actively undermine the rule of law and accountability, including pardoning drug dealers, rapists and Taliban commanders, neutering anti-corruption bodies and watering down electoral monitoring: "President Karzai appears to accept that injustice at the hands of the government has driven many to fight, but not, it seems, the extent of his own responsibility as head of state."
As with several other important reports published recently, the authors make it clear that there is no shortcut to stability, which requires making justice an issue of core interests. That is there one and only recommendation: "The impact of justice and rule of law is real: arguably it is the key battleground of the insurgency".

US policy questioned by academics and researchers

The following letter was sent today to the President of the United States by a group of academics, journalists and NGO workers. The list is growing and more information can be found at www.afghanistancalltoreason.com.

Mr. President,

We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for decades, as academics, experts and members of non-governmental organizations. Today we are deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of credible scenarios for the future. The cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone. This is unsustainable in the long run. In addition, human losses are increasing. Over 680 soldiers from the international coalition – along with hundreds of Afghans – have died this year in Afghanistan, and the year is not yet over. We appeal to you to use the unparalleled resources and influence which the United States now brings to bear in Afghanistan to achieve that longed-for peace.

Despite these huge costs, the situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country. It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition. The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country. Foreign bases are completely isolated from their local environment and unable to protect the population. Foreign forces have by now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Red Army.

Politically, the settlement resulting from the 2001 intervention is unsustainable because the constituencies of whom the Taliban are the most violent expression are not represented, and because the highly centralized constitution goes against the grain of Afghan tradition, for example in specifying national elections in fourteen of the next twenty years.

The operations in the south of Afghanistan, in Kandahar and in Helmand provinces are not going well. What was supposed to be a population-centred strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property. Night raids have become the main weapon to eliminate suspected Taliban, but much of the Afghan population sees these methods as illegitimate. Due to the violence of the military operations, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Pashtun countryside, with a direct effect on the sustainability of the war. These measures, beyond their debatable military results, foster grievance. With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution. Drone strikes in Pakistan have a marginal effect on the insurgency but are destabilizing Pakistan. The losses of the insurgency are compensated by new recruits who are often more radical than their predecessors.

The military campaign is suppressing, locally and temporarily, the symptoms of the disease, but fails to offer a cure. Military action may produce local and temporary improvements in security, but those improvements are neither going to last nor be replicable in the vast areas not garrisoned by Western forces without a political settlement.

The 2014 deadline to put the Afghan National Army in command of security is not realistic. Considering the quick disappearance of the state structure at a district level, it is difficult to envision a strong army standing alone without any other state institutions around. Like it or not, the Taliban are a long-term part of the Afghan political landscape, and we need to try and negotiate with them in order to reach a diplomatic settlement. The Taliban’s leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate, and it is in our interests to talk to them. In fact, the Taliban are primarily concerned about the future of Afghanistan and not – contrary to what some may think -- a broader global Islamic jihad. Their links with Al-Qaeda – which is not, in any case, in Afghanistan any more -- are weak. We need to at least try to seriously explore the possibility of a political settlement in which the Taliban are part of the Afghan political system. The negotiations with the insurgents could be extended to all groups in Afghanistan and regional powers.

The current contacts between the Karzai government and the Taliban are not enough. The United States must take the initiative to start negotiations with the insurgents and frame the discussion in such a way that American security interests are taken into account. In addition, from the point of view of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable populations – women and ethnic minorities, for instance – as well as with respect to the limited but real gains made since 2001, it is better to negotiate now rather than later, since the Taliban will likely be stronger next year. This is why we ask you to sanction and support a direct dialogue and negotiation with the Afghan Taliban leadership residing in Pakistan. A ceasefire and the return of the insurgency leadership in Afghanistan could be part of a de-escalation process leading to a coalition government. Without any chance for a military victory, the current policy will put the United States in a very difficult position.

For a process of political negotiation to have a chance of addressing the significant core grievances and political inequalities it must occur on multiple levels – among the countries that neighbour Afghanistan as well as down to the provincial and sub-district.  These various tables around which negotiations need to be held are important to reinforce the message -- and the reality -- that discussions about Afghanistan’s political future must include all parties and not just be a quick-fix deal with members of the insurgency.

We believe that mediation can help achieve a settlement which brings peace to Afghanistan, enables the Taliban to become a responsible actor in the Afghan political order, ensures that Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for international terrorism, protects the Afghan people’s hard-won freedoms, helps stabilize the region, renders the large scale presence of international troops in Afghanistan unnecessary and provides the basis of an enduring relationship between Afghanistan and the international community. All the political and diplomatic ingenuity that the United States can muster will be required to achieve this positive outcome. It is time to implement an alternative strategy that would allow the United States to exit Afghanistan while safeguarding its legitimate security interests.

Respectfully,

Matthieu Aikins

Journalist

Scott Atran

Anthropologist (University of Michigan) and author of Talking to the Enemy 

Rupert Talbot Chetwynd

Author of Yesterday’s Enemy - Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?

Robert Abdul Hayy Darr

Author of The Spy of the Heart and humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Gilles Dorronsoro

Visiting Scholar (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and author of Revolution Unending

David B. Edwards

Anthropologist (Williams College) and author of Before Taliban

Jason Elliot

Author of An Unexpected Light

Antonio Giustozzi

Author of Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop and editor of Decoding the New Taliban

Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Associate Professor, James Madison University

Daniel Korski

Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations

Felix Kuehn

Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban

Minna Jarvenpaa

Former Head of Analysis and Policy Planning, UNAMA

Anatol Lieven

Professor, War Studies Department of King’s College London and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country

Bob McKerrow

Author of Mountains of our Minds – Afghanistan

Alessandro Monsutti

Research Director, Transnational Studies/Development Studies at The Graduate Institute, Geneva

Ahmed Rashid

Journalist and author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos

Nir Rosen

Fellow, New York University Center on Law and Security

Gerard Russell

Research Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University

Alex Strick van Linschoten

Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban

Astri Surkhe

Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway

Yama Torabi

Co-Director, Integrity Watch Afghanistan

Jere van Dyk

Author of In Afghanistan and Captive

Matt Waldman

Afghanistan Analyst