Using Talks with the Taliban to Fix the Afghan Political System Posted by Jacob Stokes

Earlier today I attended an enlightening event at the Center for American Progress on transition goals for Afghanistan. Among the many insightful points that were brought up by panelists David Kilcullen, Caroline Wadhams and Anand Gopal was the urgent need for work on political reform in the country.

There is widespread consensus on the need for political reform. The basic problem is that the government is too concentrated at the center – far more so than it should be for a society as diverse as Afghanistan. Right now, Hamid Karzai is unlikely to accept reforms because Afghanistan’s overly centralized structure, enshrined in the country’s constitution, enables Karzai to place cronies in power all over the country, creating a vast patronage network for himself. As has been widely documented, this often results in “predatory” governance.

Even if Karzai governed effectively, political reform is necessary because his second term ends, depending on how you count it, in either April or November of 2014. (The Afghan constitution imposes a two-term limit on the president.) Either date falls just before the time America and NATO have said that they will transition the security lead in Afghanistan to Afghans. Relying on the system in place now, overly centralized and embodied by Karzai, is simply not a long-term solution.

So what to do? America and NATO should continue to push for negotiations with the Taliban and towards a broader political settlement (which must also include current and former members of the Northern Alliance). And we should use those negotiations as an opportunity to catalyze constitutional reform. At today’s panel, both Wadhams and Kilcullen agreed that talks represent an opening for revising the formal governance structure to be more representative and less centralized.

America and NATO need to start thinking about what’s left behind in Afghanistan post-2014. Using limited U.S. leverage to push for a political settlement -- and with it, political reform -- that’s broadly representative is an essential part of ensuring stability, and by extension U.S. interests, post-2014.

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It is past time for the United States to shift some of its capacity for risk-taking in the war off the battlefield and into diplomacy aimed at reinforcing Afghan political unity, neutrality, civil rights, and social cohesion. The recent talks are nevertheless a constructive step. For too long, American political strategy in Afghanistan has been subordinate to military and intelligence operations. Thinking and learning through principled discussions with an enemy is an opportunity, not a trap.

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