Today, Explained - Peace with the Taliban

Episode Date: January 29, 2019

The US and the Taliban are working out a deal to end America’s longest war. Afghanistan is nervous. Vox’s Jennifer Williams explains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

jim williams you're the co-host of the worldly podcast from vox the united states wants a peace deal with the taliban what's the deal yeah so the u.s. and the Taliban have tentatively agreed to the framework for a peace deal, which is a really big deal. And it could potentially lead to the end of U.S. involvement in this almost two decade long war. So this news feels sort of abrupt out of the blue, but I'm guessing it's probably less out of the blue than we think it is. How did we get here? Yeah. I mean, it's a bit surprising, but we have this special envoy whose basically entire job is to go and work on this, right? Okay.

To work these negotiations. His name's Zalmay Khalilzad. He has been holding talks basically since this past July in Doha in Qatar. It's like this kind of neutral third party where we tend to meet with the Taliban. They have offices there. Huh.

Yeah. Previous talks have broken down, including one time when they flew a Taliban flag there and the leader of Afghanistan saw that and got really pissed off and ended talks. A lot of Americans probably think of the Taliban as like this, you know, super crazy militant group that is like evil and bad and does really bad things. And yeah, they do. But they also like have political offices, right? Like they do have negotiators that sit down and at a table and talk about like, let's work out a peace framework. So nobody really thought going into this that Khalilzad would be able to like get them to this point, the U.S. and the Taliban to this point,

this quickly. Okay, so negotiations have been ongoing since July. Who's been involved? So there are three really main players here in the actual negotiations and peace talks. The U.S. Okay. The Taliban. Of course. And you have the Afghan government, which the U.S. supports.

The Taliban does not, doesn't recognize it as legitimate government and has been fighting against it. So those are the three main parties to the conflict. And so what's changed between these three primary parties recently that's making this possible? Let's start with the U.S. On the U.S. side, you have Donald Trump, who really, really seriously, like extra super duper, wants to bring U.S. troops home like right this second. Right. He has like a very clear incentive to want to like figure out how to work with the Taliban, come up with some kind of deal that basically gives him an excuse to be able to pull out.

Right. Like, I'm done. I don't want to be in this war forever. You know, it's like nickname the forever war for a good reason. Yeah. On the other side, you have the Taliban. Right. They happen to control something like 40 percent of the country now. They've, like, really had a resurgence of power and reach basically since, like, all foreign combat troops pulled out around 2014. So we still have, like,

a lot of troops there. Us, the U.S., and NATO countries. But they're in, like, these advise and assist role. And so they are basically at their peak of their, like, power now. They're really powerful, and they want to use that leverage, right? Like, look, we basically run half this country, right?

A little less than that. So like, you have to work with us now. Which brings us to the third party, which is the Afghan government. Right. They also would very much like to, you know, finish this and not like have to continue fighting. Afghan forces are bearing the brunt of the casualties.

Like they're the ones who, you know, Afghan police, Afghan security forces, Afghan military, who are fighting the Taliban, they're the ones dying in, like, large numbers. They have an incentive to want to finish this. They also know that the U.S. really wants to pull out. So they're like, okay, the U.S. is about to leave, which means we're going to lose, like, a lot of the support and backing. We better, like, figure out a way to sit down with the Taliban and like solve this. All these kind of things come together at this point where like it's possible that they could actually be the basis for a peace deal to end this war. Do we know any of the details about what might be agreed upon yet?

Yeah. So it's not like an official deal yet. It's just like the framework for maybe eventually having a peace deal, right? So like we're kind of sketching out like the first part of it. A draft. Yeah, basically. The Taliban has agreed to this thing that we have been asking them forever, which is to promise that they won't let groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS operate from their territory safely,

right? So like that's the whole reason we invaded Afghanistan, right? Because they let al-Qaeda just like party in their territory, plan attacks against us. They haven't wanted to do that for a really long time. Some senior leaders have because they're like, yeah, supporting al-Qaeda and letting them hang out here is pretty much the worst thing we ever did like strategically because, you know, that brought down the might of the U.S. military on them when they did that. But some of the more like rank and file like fighters in the Taliban are probably a lot more sympathetic to some of those groups. Right. And so there's been like kind of a rift within like the leadership like, well, we don't want to totally like agree to that with the U.S. But I guess the Taliban basically sees like that they can probably bring their

fighters along at this point that's like the basic framework right now is there a chance that there's like sort of like a nudge nudge wink wink situation going on where it's like let's just say we'll police ISIS whatever it is get the U.S. out of here and then we get to do whatever we want again yeah so that's like a big question mark, right? How do you check that, right? And what do you do if they go back on their word? You just, like, reinvade Afghanistan? This isn't like nuclear inspections where you can send in, like,

an international agency to go, like, verify nuclear storage facilities. Like, there's a lot of questions still to be worked out. So whether or not the United States can guarantee anything, the two things they're talking about are the Taliban policing terrorism and the U.S. leaving. Yeah. But there are other things, too, that they haven't agreed to yet, right? So the U.S. also wants the Taliban to sit down face-to-face with the Afghan government in Kabul, which so far the Taliban has flat refused to do ever because they don't recognize the legitimacy of that government. The Americans also want the Taliban to agree to a ceasefire. Like, could you guys maybe just stop shooting and bombing each other? Yeah.

The Taliban has so far refused to do that as well. Taliban officials have basically told reporters and diplomats and said, like, look, one of the reasons is if we, like, let all of our fighters go home and tell them to, like, lay down arms and stop fighting for a while, we're worried that maybe if we have to start up fighting again, like, they won't, right? Like, we might lose, like, attrition. Like, people are going to, like, go back home and get jobs, right? Right. But there seems to be a little bit of movement even on those things. But with all three of these major parties hoping to get a deal, is it just super likely that one happens? I mean, it's not super likely at all.

It's definitely looking positive, right? Like I'm a really big cynic when it comes to the conflict in Afghanistan ending. But this is really like the closest we've gotten. And because, like you said, all three sides actually have incentives to get this done, the foundations are there that it could potentially turn out to be the actual peace deal that could potentially end the war in Afghanistan. Jen Williams is a foreign editor at Vox. Coming up on Today Explained, a peace deal might bring some peace of mind to the United States, but not necessarily Afghanistan. Josie and Johnny have a podcast and it's called Josie and Johnny are having a Thank you. plan pregnancy as they try to prepare for the birth of their first child. They cover the funny questions, they cover the serious questions, and they have their more experienced friends come on to help them with both.

The first episode of the show is already live. In it, Josie and Johnny try to answer the hard questions about one's dad persona, also Santa Claus, and how to avoid repeating the same mistakes your parents made. It also features John Hodgman. You can find Josie and Johnny on Stitcher, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on Overcast, on Pocket Casts, on Google Podcasts. I just looked up a bunch of other podcast places. There's a bunch. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. To

understand how huge it would be if the United States could broker some kind of peace in Afghanistan, you have to understand that the country's been in conflict for around 40 years, and the Taliban was born in the middle of that conflict. The Taliban is a Sunni Afghan insurgency that has been fighting the United States since 2001. Vanda Felbab Brown is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. It has its background and origins in the 1980s Afghan insurgency against the Soviet invasion of the country.

The Taliban were some of the Mujahideen who were fighting the Soviets. They shared a common enemy with the United States, and both the Carter and Reagan administrations gave the Mujahideen $3 billion in military aid to fight the Soviets. And in the 1990s, after the Soviets withdrew, the country fell into civil war

with various parts of the country controlled by various Afghan warlords. The most militant extremist faction of the Mujahideen turned into the Taliban. And from 94 started fighting against the warlords, against the various clans and tribes and factions and gradually took over the country. And what do they do once they take control of the country? The Taliban did deliver on its promise of bringing stability and peace to large portions of the country.

By 2001, the Taliban really ruled most of Afghanistan, with the exception of a small space in the country's north. The Taliban did stop the corruption, venality, human rights abuses, rapes, robberies of the various warlords, but they unleashed their own serious human rights violations and abuses. They really wanted to turn Afghanistan into a 9th century-like backward place. So women were tremendously restricted in their freedoms. They could not get jobs. They could not access health care. Women were stoned for adultery, as were men. Many men were executed, beheaded. And apart from that,

the Taliban were also very inadequate in their administrative capacity. And not just inadequate, they really wanted to turn Afghanistan into a very backward place and they actively went ahead and destroyed any vestiges of economic activity and social government administration. And how and when does al-Qaeda show up? Al-Qaeda emerged out of some of the same fighters, in this case foreign non-Afghan fighters who were fighting the Soviets. Bin Laden was one of the foreign fighters fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion.

And it is in Afghanistan where he got to know the future leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar. So Mullah Omar in particularly and the core group of fighters around him had lots of connections and personal relationships with bin Laden. When al-Qaeda, under bin Laden's leadership, was looking for a place to have as a safe haven for its operations, they shopped for a number of countries. For a while, they were in Sudan. Ultimately, they got pushed out from Sudan.

It's at that point in the mid-1990s where they set up camp in Afghanistan with the welcome and protection of Mullah Omar. And it is out of Afghanistan where al-Qaeda planned major attacks, major international terrorist attacks against USS Cole, against the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and ultimately, of course, 9-11. After 9-11, the United States requested that the Taliban hands over al-Qaeda, Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda members for prosecution in the U.S. The Taliban has been given the opportunity to surrender all the terrorists in Afghanistan and to close down their camps and operations. Full warning has been given, and time is running out. The Taliban, of course, refused to do it, and the United States invaded Afghanistan

within metro peaks, toppling the Afghan Taliban regime. And by about late 2001, early 2002, the Taliban is really eliminated as a regime entity in Afghanistan. The United States then subsequently tries to build a functioning government in Afghanistan. And in the beginning, there is significant hope among the Afghan population that a much better government and much better governance will follow. There is tremendous enthusiasm early on, but the governance that then follows is troubled. The governance is pervaded by corruption, abuses, lack of government capacity,

and this provides fertile ground for the Taliban to entrench its back among the population. So now the Taliban is back in this position of influence. How has it changed now over the past few decades? Especially after 2005, the Taliban has been steadily gaining military power, so much so that it precipitated the surge during the Obama administration, where some 100,000 U.S. forces and another 50,000 international coalition forces were fighting the Taliban. But the Taliban managed to hunker down and survive it. And today it is more powerful on the battlefield than it has been at any point since they were defeated by the United States at that point. And it controls large parts of Afghanistan. It doesn't have formal recognized control,

but it de facto controls large parts of the south and east. And the rule that it's instituting is still a very brutal rule, but it's often more predictable than the capricious brutality and corruption of the Afghan government and power brokers associated with it. How could this deal change that status quo? What could the country look like if the U.S. is able to broker some kind of peace? Well, it's very important to understand that the deal that's been announced this weekend, the core contours of the deal, is really only a deal between the Taliban and the U.S.

But there is expectation that the Taliban will then negotiate the deal with the Afghan government. The details of the deal yet remain to be seen. If there is a deal, the Taliban will clearly be asking for substantial power at the national level, in the national government in Kabul. It will be asking for substantial subnational level power, and it will be asking for changes to the political order in Afghanistan. That might mean revising the Afghan constitution, or if the constitution is not revised, at least not early on in the deal, the Taliban will nonetheless want much more religious, much more conservative rule with many fewer freedoms for people, no guaranteed freedoms in the Constitution.

Under kind of the best circumstances, think of the political social life in Iran as one model. Iran is a Shia country, the Taliban are Sunnis. But think of a very religiously ruled place or Saudi Arabia. Many Afghans are frightened of that possibility. It might still mean tremendous religious oppression without basic economic livelihoods being satisfied. So there are very many ways for the peace and a peace deal to shape out, many of which

are very unhappy. And that's really what will determine whether peace brings relief and stability and prosperity to Afghanistan or whether the peace reduces the violence and deaths, but still leaves behind very difficult conditions for people. Wanda Feldbaugh-Brown focuses on international conflicts and security at the Brookings Institution. Thank you.