Time to Talk to the Taliban

By RICHARD BARRETT
NYT

SPECULATION is growing both inside and outside Afghanistan that the government in Kabul is about to open reconciliation talks with the Taliban. Indeed, Taliban leaders, however hesitantly, are beginning to look at alternatives to fighting. They no doubt realize that a military victory is as remote and as hard to define for them as it appears to be for President Hamid Karzai and his NATO allies.

This is unsurprising. Time, rather than resources or appetite for fighting, is beginning to run out for the Taliban. Until recently, they have argued that they will continue to fight until all foreign troops leave the country. Their other conditions are that certain Taliban prisoners must be freed from detention and that the United Nations Security Council should remove the names of Taliban members from its Qaeda-Taliban sanctions list.

But as it becomes increasingly clear that there will be only a limited drawdown of United States troops starting next July, and that the current intense air campaign and other attacks on Taliban leaders are likely to continue, waiting until the foreigners leave is no longer such an attractive option.

The Taliban’s command-and-control networks have stood up relatively well since their resurgence in 2006, but the campaign against their senior and middle leadership by American, Afghan and other special forces, aided by a much-improved intelligence picture and supported by drones, has taken a huge toll. The Taliban have not just lost many key commanders; the surviving senior leaders are forced to keep out of sight and now rarely travel within Afghanistan.

(More here.)