The notion of integrating top Taliban commanders into the Afghan government is gaining traction among influential members of the Obama administration. Joe Biden likes the idea, as apparently does Richard Holbrooke, while Gen. Stanley McChrystal has indicated he could see a role for Taliban members in government.
On the surface, it’s an attractive solution. The administration is rightly skeptical of the election-stealing Afghan President Karzai, who continues to rule a corrupt regime. “(Sigh.) Fine. Let the Taliban into government,” you can almost hear war-weary NSC officials dejectedly admit, “at least it’ll help get us the #@*% out of there.”
Unfortunately, it’s a short-sighted solution that will ultimately undermine NATO’s many hard-won victories in Afghanistan over the last eight-plus years.
Before digging into the why, it’s important to clarify exactly what’s under consideration. Today, the WaPo reported that in an effort “energize the peace process,” the U.N. has lifted sanctions against five former Taliban officials who are prepared to renounce violence. These converts fall in a different category than what the White House is currently debating. While reconciliation with the likes of hard-core top Taliban elements like Mullah Omar is out of the question, an administration official conceded that the White House was discussing “above low- and mid-level fighters.”
Stop right there: Those low- and mid-level fighters are far enough. Above that pay-grade, the Taliban’s mid-tier officers are in it not just for the paycheck, but for steadfast ideological convictions that are much harder to genuinely convert.
And that ideology fundamentally rejects the pillars supporting government in Kabul. As Barbara Elias writes in a hard-hitting essay for Foreign Affairs, governing within an even partially Westernized democracy is out of the question:
Their [the Taliban’s] legitimacy rests not on their governing skills, popular support, or territorial control, but on their claim to represent what they perceive as sharia rule. This means upholding the image that they are guided entirely by Islamic principles; as such, they cannot make concessions to, or earnestly negotiate with, secular states.
In other words, we should be highly suspicious when the likes of Taliban leader Mullah Omar makes overtures about playing “our role in peace and stability of the region,” as he did in the fall. It’s a trap – the Taliban’s leaders want to join government to overthrow what it sees as a traitorous regime supported by infidel Western tyrants, not to act as a constructive governing partner. Once sharing power, the Taliban’s ideological resolve will only harden as its members refuse to accommodate otherwise constructive solutions forwarded by their more secular domestic or international partners.
It is far more constructive to remove the ideologues’ foot soldiers, which is precisely the aim of a potential $1 billion program for jobs and education for the Taliban’s grunts. Depriving the Taliban of its army is critical to removing its ability to peddle fear and repression outside of power. Integrating its non-contrite higher-ranking officers into the government just gives them a different kind of army.
That’s why it is yet again gut check time for the White House. Working with the most vile members of the Taliban is a great temptation, but will prove a fool’s errand.
