4/20/11 

This week saw the spring fighting season begin to heat up in Afghanistan. The Taliban is expected to deploy more roadside bombs, assassinations and suicide bombers to test the staying power of NATO forces spread more broadly across the country after the winter offensive. Experts and political leaders are stressing that with the heightened fighting comes the imperative to negotiate a political solution. The week also saw small steps in the process of moving towards talks. Turkey offered to set up an office for the Afghan Taliban, which would help the process by giving the Afghan Taliban a base for unimpeded, ongoing negotiations. And Pakistan renewed ties with the Afghan government as the pair agreed to include the Pakistani military and intelligence services as part of the formal negotiation process. The time to negotiate a political solution is now, with Western troop presence - and by extension, its bargaining position - at its strongest.

Spring fighting season brings change in tactics, tests the sustainability of NATO stance. After a lull during the winter months, spring typically brings with it an increase in fighting as the Taliban seeks to regain the ground it lost during the winter months. According to the Washington Post, "Senior U.S. officers said they expect the insurgents to shift tactics: Instead of trying to take on American troops directly, as they did in Sangin and Zhari in the fall, the Taliban will attempt to plant more homemade explosives, recruit a new cadre of suicide bombers and assassinate Afghan government officials - as it did late last week, killing the police chief in Kandahar province. The result, according to an internal military projection, could be a far more violent summer for both Americans and Afghans." New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers further explains that, "When the United States sends forces into a new area or an area that they haven't had a whole lot of influence in, there often is a lot of initial small-arms fighting, you know, firefights and ambushes, if you will. With time, this tends to subside, and you see a greater reliance on improvised explosives, you know, on roadside bombs and bombs along the trails." In addition to a shift in tactics, NATO forces must also confront the continuing problem of fighters drifting back into Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistan. The Washington Post notes, "The question of the moment for [ISAF Afghanistan Commander Gen. David] Petraeus and his subordinates is whether the gains will hold as Taliban commanders, laden with cash and munitions, stream across the desert from Pakistan, where there has been considerably less progress in denying them sanctuary." [C.J. Chivers via NPR, 2/28/11. Washington Post, 4/16/11]

Taliban talks will be long and challenging - early moves this week are positive signs. This week saw two positive developments in the process of finding a political solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. First, Turkey announced that preparations are underway for the opening of an office in Turkey for the Afghan Taliban. Second, Afghan and Pakistani officials agreed to include Pakistani military and intelligence officials in a commission seeking peace with the Taliban. That move gives Pakistan's security establishment a formal role in any talks. These are important first steps for establishing formal talks with the Taliban and helping Pakistan find a positive role, respectively. Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid says this kind of regional participation  "hold(s) the key to a peaceful settlement as the US and Nato prepare to pull out their troops by 2014." On the benefits of an office for the Afghan Taliban, Rashid explains: "With such an office there could be direct, unimpeded talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government and outsiders such as the Americans."

Against the backdrop of small positive developments, though, big challenges remain.  As Radio Free Europe reports, "Lack of trust is emerging as the No. 1 problem as Afghan President Hamid Karzai pushes for a national reconciliation with the Taliban. Faced with increased international military operations, Taliban elements appear to be extremely skeptical of the peace overtures that Afghan and international officials have made to entice the insurgents into negotiations." [VOA, 4/14/11. Reuters, 4/19/11. Ahmed Rashid, 4/18/11. RFE/RL, 4/16/11]

Afghanistan needs a political solution; negotiations are the way to get there. "The theory and practice of counter-insurgency leads everyone to incant the cliché that there is no military solution; but it is a cliché because it is true, so it is time that we stopped behaving as if there were a military solution and developed a political one," explains the former British foreign minister David Miliband in the International Herald Tribune. He goes on to say, "The 2014 end date set by NATO will prove illusory unless there is an endgame. And that endgame must be negotiations, involving Western powers led by the United States, with all factions in the Afghan struggle and their backers in the region. The issue is not simply that the political arm of the Defense-Development-Diplomacy triad has been missing in action. A political settlement is not one part of a multipronged strategy in a counterinsurgency; it is the overarching framework within which everything else fits and in the service of which everything else operates." Daniel Serwer of Peacefare and Johns Hopkins University expands: "If we really believe there is no military solution, why bother fighting to what conflict management experts call a ‘mutually hurting stalemate,' a condition in which neither side can improve its position by further military effort? If we want to get out, why not make the arrangements now rather than waiting for what we believe to be inevitable? Much blood and treasure can be saved and little of value lost... Bottom line, negotiations are a good bet even if they don't end in a deal." [David Miliband, 4/12/11. Daniel Serwer, 4/7/11]

What We're Reading

The Syrian government ratcheted up its efforts to quell weeks of demonstrations, firing live ammunition into a crowd of protesters in one city even as it lifted decades-old emergency laws in an attempt to appease its critics.

As protestors clashed with security forces in Sana'a, the UN Security Council met on the political crisis in Yemen, but failed to agree on a joint statement.

The runner-up in Nigeria's presidential election, Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari, announced he will legally challenge the vote's outcome.

A new rebellion has broken out in southern Sudan, offering yet another threat to the world's newest nation even before its birth.

Two leading Chinese human rights lawyers have been released after disappearing during the country's continuing crackdown on dissent.

India successfully launched a rocket carrying three satellites into orbit in its latest effort to gain a share of the global commercial space market.

Cuba's Communist Party elected President Raul Castro to succeed his older brother Fidel Castro as head of the country's highest political body.

Troops clashed with gunmen trying to establish a base in a city in eastern Mexico, killing 10 alleged assailants.

Italy deported a Tunisian former inmate at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo bay, accusing him of being part of an extremist cell.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has unveiled plans to reverse Russia's declining population.

Commentary of the Day

David Ignatius argues that the United States should spend less on Afghanistan and more on Egypt.

Mike McGovern writes that the fall of Laurent Gbagbo was the result of a civil war many years in the making and it is up to the international community to make its intervention a net positive.

Ray Takeyh discusses the likelihood of Libya's partition and the realities of the country's putative tribal discord.