To Talk with the Taliban? Posted by Patrick Barry

Unsurprisingly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offering of safe-passage to Mullah Omar, should he desire to sit down at the Kabul negotating table, prompted A LOT of chatter amongst Afghanistan\COIN\Military-followers. Spencer Ackerman looks at recent commentary from Kilcullen and Collins and wonders whether Karzai's offer means we'll soon get a chance to test what has so far been a fascinating, but also speculative exercise:

Karzai basically dared the Taliban to sit down with him, saying "they must prove themselves," not just boast about their seriousness for peace.

Lots of smart people don't believe Omar would seriously negotiate. Our old friend Dave Kilcullen recently said so to the New Yorker's George Packer. Joe Collins, a former Pentagon official, thinks the whole idea of negotiating with the Afghan insurgency is doomed to fail if we don't start killing more Taliban first.

And they may be right. But it's looking more and more like we may get to test the proposition.

Judging from this story in Reuters, so far, the proposition holds - Mullah Omar ain't hitching a ride to Kabul, least not while there are Americans about:

Mullah Brother, deputy leader of the Taliban, rejected Karzai's offer of safe passage and again said foreign troops had to leave before negotiations could start.

"As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren't ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won't bear fruit ... The problems in Afghanistan are because of them," Brother said.

In a bizarre way, I think this revelation actually strengthens rather than undercuts the case for exploring talks with reconcilable elements of the Taliban - if the argument for this plan is born out of a desire to probe and expose the fissures that are believed to exist within the Taliban movement, then a rejection of negotiation does about as much good as a tentative acceptance. There is clarity either way.  At the very least, it sets up a position with which the various elements of the Taliban can either agree or disagree.  My own sense is that we're better served talking when we're strong than when we're weak, and all that's likely to result from reaching out to the Taliban too hastily is more breathing room for forces hostile to the Afghan government.  But at this early stage, I'm still willing to be convinced otherwise.

This leads me to a broader observation, which has to do with something Steve Coll said at the unveiling of CAP's new Pakistan report today.  When asked by someone in the audience about the feasibility of negotiating with the Taliban, Coll replied that there can be no grand bargain with the Taliban, because there is no 'Grand Taliban' with whom you can bargain - a remark that speaks to both the enticing opportunities available to exploit divisions and parse out moderates from irreconciables and also the problems of treating a movement with no clear center too simplistically.

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