Why is the US negotiating with the world’s deadliest terror organization?

Data presented in the Global Terrorism Index 2019 shows that Afghanistan replaced Iraq in 2018 as the country most impacted by terrorism, and that the (Afghan) Taliban now holds the title of the world’s deadliest terror group. This information is significant as Iraq has been the country most impacted by terrorism for the past 15 years, and the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has been the deadliest terror organization since 2014. However, in 2018 alone there has been a 70% decrease in deaths caused by ISIS terror attacks, while conversely we have seen the same increase of deaths attributed to the Taliban. The Taliban also executed what are by far the two deadliest attacks in 2018 with 466 and 330 casualties respectively. The third most deadly terror attack on the other hand was claimed by an ISIS related branch: “only” killing 150 people in Pakistan. With the exception of the Pakistan attack, the top ten deadliest attacks in 2018 were all executed in Afghanistan with the Taliban claiming responsibility for seven of them. [1] Still, at the time of writing, the US is negotiating with the Taliban trying to reach a peace agreement. This article, thus, seeks to address the situation in Afghanistan and the little-discussed absurdity that the US now is bargaining with the world’s deadliest terror organisation. 

By Frida Ekren

The Afghan Taliban is a fundamentalist Sunni Islamist militant organization established in Afghanistan in 1994 as a response to the civil war that started two years earlier. Mullah Mohammad Omar led the group largely consisting of fighters from the mujahideen (“holy warriors”) who had been fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan just a few years earlier (1979-89). The group’s aim was to govern Afghanistan on the basis of Sharia law, a goal they accomplished in 1996 after popular growth led them to finally capture the capital. The Taliban thus governed Afghanistan in accordance with Sharia law until a coalition led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) overthrew them from power when they refused to extradite Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 attacks. Despite controlling  90% of Afghan territory, only three states (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) actually acknowledged the Taliban government at this time. [2]

After losing power in 2001, the Taliban reorganized and started an insurgency from Pakistan to fight and delegitimize the new Afghan government, the United States (US), and NATO forces. Pakistan has supported the Taliban economically, militarily and with recruits since the latter’s creation, and played an important role in the re-emergence of the Taliban after 2001 by providing them with safe havens in Pakistan [3]. This insurgency developed into an 18-year-long civil war which still rages.The death toll of the war is difficult to determine because no comprehensive account of the death toll from the war existed until the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) began counting in 2008. According to estimates made by the “Costs of War Project” at Brown University, however, about 157,000 people have been killed as a direct result of the war,  43,000 of whom were civilians. Many more have been injured. [4] In 2006 the Taliban-led insurgency escalated drastically [5], and thus after 2007 insurgent or militant forces have been responsible for the majority of civilian casualties [6]. Today, the Taliban has de facto control of approximately 15% of the country, and well over half of the remaining territory is contested. Moreover, about half of the Afghan population― around 15 million people― live in areas that are controlled or actively operated by the Taliban. [7]

The drastic increase in the number of attacks by the Taliban in 2018 is arguably due to the US-Taliban peace talks which are now taking place. This strategy seems, at the time of writing this piece, to have given the Taliban leverage in the negotiations ― possibly pushing the US to accept terms that they otherwise would have not. Even though terrorism can seem random and unplanned, it is a means for the weaker party in a conflict to convey a political message. In this case, the Taliban utilises terrorism to target what they see as an illegitimate government and its allies. Highlighting this observation is the fact that the Taliban seek to target mainly military and police personnel, in order to undermine and destabilise the current government. Thus, deaths of Afghan security forces constitute 59% of all deaths in 2018. Through this deadly campaign, the Taliban have managed to seize control over several strategic cities leading to territorial expansion beyond their traditional stronghold in the South. [8]

Approaching the Taliban to begin a peace process has been the number one priority for Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani in recent years. [9] Moreover, a survey conducted by the Asia Foundation shows that 88.5% of Afghans support peace talks with the Taliban [10]. At the time of writing, the US and Taliban have reached an agreement regarding a seven day partial ceasefire. US President Donald Trump is thus accepting the Taliban’s offer to reduce the level of violence in Afghanistan for a week, and in return, the US and Afghan security forces will do the same. [11] If successful, this agreement is meant to be a first step towards broader peace talks that would include an arrangement where the US pulls out large parts of its troops, and in exchange the Taliban would make guarantees regarding security and eventually talks with the Afghan government. [12]

President Trump initiated talks with the Taliban in 2018, and there is now cautious optimism regarding a peace agreement. However, this is not the first time that there have been attempted ceasefires and peace negotiations with the Taliban. The Trump administration held talks with the Taliban as recently as 2019, but Trump called them off after a suicide attack in Afghanistan killed a US service member. [13]

There is no doubt that a peace agreement would be warmly welcomed by most parties after 18 years of war in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, it does raise some questions: what happened to the (official) American principle that, ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’? [14] Furthermore, if it is a change of US policy that we are witnessing, why were peace negotiations not an option with ISIS? Both the Taliban and ISIS are Sunni Islamist militant groups which seek to create a state governed by Sharia law, and both groups use terrorism as a way to convey their message, thus killing thousands of innocent people. Why are the terrorist acts conducted by the Taliban seemingly more acceptable than those of ISIS?

Policy makers and scholars within the field of counter-terrorism have for decades ‘pledged never to talk to terrorists’. [15] In the US context, then-President George W. Bush set the bar in 2003 as he declared that, ‘The only way to deal with these people is to bring them to justice. You can’t talk to them. You can’t negotiate with them.’ [16] This principle is further backed by academia, with many scholars arguing that, ‘Negotiations on the underlying political demands of terrorists are unlikely to resolve the conflict and may simply incite more terrorism’. [17] The reasoning for this argument is that entering talks with terrorists will legitimize terrorist groups, their goals and the means they apply to achieve them. Still, we have seen former terrorist organisations, or organisations allegedly linked to them, legitimised as political organisations and integrated into the political state structures. Examples of this are seen with Sinn Féin (allegedly linked to the Irish Republican Army (IRA)) in Ireland, the Revolutionary Armed forces of Columbia (FARC) in Colombia, the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) (allegedly linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ) in Turkey and Bildu (allegedly linked to Basque Country and Freedom (ETA)) in Spain. Even though some scholars argue that negotiations are useful because it gives “terrorists” non-violent means of communication, we are still left with the question of why the US wants to negotiate with the Taliban and not with other groups, such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, for instance. [18]

As Kate Clark, the co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, points out, a withdrawal of US troops might tip the military balance in the Taliban’s favour. [19] Thus, we an Islamic state which applies Sharia law can potentially be established, suppressing womens’ rights and other human rights such as freedom of speech and girls’ right to education. These are values that the West holds dear and have spent time and resources to ensure across the globe. Why is the West seemingly willing to accept such a situation in Afghanistan and not in Syria or Iraq? Has the level of violence in Afghanistan pushed the US into a corner with no other choice than to talk with the Taliban? The numbers do not imply that this is the case however, as ISIS still killed more people at its height in 2016 [19], than the Taliban did at their peak in 2018. Could it then be that President Trump is agreeing to terms not profitable for the US to gain a short-term victory in the re-election year?

There is no simple answer to these questions, which moreover, would undoubtedly require a much longer article. However, I think one key aspect to answering these questions is the international orientation of ISIS terrorist activities. Despite threatening to attack western countries, and indeed attacking western targets in Afghanistan [21], the Taliban have never encouraged or executed terror attacks in the West or the US. [22] ISIS on the other hand encourages Muslims around the world to join their state-building project and to execute  attacks in the West. Naturally, this strategy directly affects Western security and interests. The Taliban on the other hand, aims to establish a Sharia-governed state within Afghanistan and thus they do not affect Western interests to the same degree that ISIS does or did. This distinction calls to attention several questions: Is the West willing to accept terrorism executed by the Taliban because it does not affect “us”, and thus, we can leave it to be “their” problem? Is Afghanistan too distant for us to care? Have almost two decades of war created a feeling of apathy in the West towards the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan? At the same time, what are the prospects of peace in Afghanistan if we are not willing to negotiate with “terrorists”? And lastly, at the very baseline of this issue lies again the question of how useful it is to designate a group as terrorists – is it a helpful term or only a tool for policy-makers to legitimize the use of extraordinary measures? This article does not aim to answer these questions, but to point out the fact that the Taliban´s heightened violence is not being addressed in Western media and that it may be time to bring them to light once more.

Sources

[1] The Institute for Economics and Peace (2019). “Global Terrorism Index 2019: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism”, Sydney, November 2019. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2019/11/GTI-2019web.pdf , accessed 03.02.2020.

[2] Stenersen, Anne, Gunhild Gursli-Berg, Gunnar Filseth & Bjørn Johannessen (2018). “Taliban” in Det Store norske leksikon. Available from: https://snl.no/Taliban , accessed 03.02.2020.

Center for International Security and Cooperation (2018). “Afghan Taliban” in Mapping Militant Organizations, Stanford University. Available from: https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/afghan-taliban#text_block_16833 , accessed 03.02.2020.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Crawford, Neta C. (2016). “Update on the Human Costs of War for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001 to mid-2016”, Watson Institute at Brown University. Available from: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2016/War%20in%20Afghanistan%20and%20Pakistan%20UPDATE_FINAL_corrected%20date.pdf , accessed 06.02.2020.

— “Afghan civilians”, https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan , accessed 06.02.2020.

[5] Stenersen et. al.

[6] Crawford

[7] The Institute for Economics and Peace (2019). “Global Terrorism Index 2019: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism”, Sydney, November 2019. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2019/11/GTI-2019web.pdf , accessed 03.02.2020.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Center for International Security and Cooperation (2018). “Afghan Taliban” in Mapping Militant Organizations, Stanford University. Available from: https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/afghan-taliban#text_block_16833 , accessed 03.02.2020.

[10] Akseer, Tabasum, et.al. (2019). “Afghanistan in 2019 a Survey of the Afghan People” by The Asia Foundation. Available from: https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019_Afghan_Survey_Full-Report.pdf , accessed 05.02.2020.

[11] Qazi, Shereena (2020). “US-Taliban truce begins, raising hopes of peace deal”, Aljazeera, 22.02.2020. Available from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/pact-taliban-reducing-violence-start-saturday-200221094340829.html

[12] Aljazeera (2020). “Afghan war: US, Taliban close to 'reduction in violence' deal”, 13.02.2020. Available from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/afghan-war-taliban-close-reduction-violence-deal-200212103425423.html

[13] Romero, Dennis, Dan De Luce, Mushtaq Yusufzai & Ahmed Mengli (2019). “Trump says he's canceling Afghan peace talks, secret meeting with Taliban leaders” in NBC News, 08.09.2019. Available from: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-says-he-s-canceling-afghanistan-peace-talks-secret-meeting-n1051141

[14] Toros, Harmonie (2008). “ ‘We Don’t Negotiate with Terrorists!’: Legitimacy and Complexity in Terrorist Conflicts”, Security Dialogue vol. 39, no. 4, August 2008. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237967555_We_Don't_Negotiate_with_Terrorists'_Legitimacy_and_Complexity_in_Terrorist_Conflicts

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Borger, Julian (2020). “Pompeo touts partial ceasefire with Taliban in push for election-year troop reduction”, the Guardian, 13.02.2020. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/12/afghanistan-taliban-partial-ceasefire-us

[20] The Institute for Economics and Peace (2018). “Global Terrorism Index 2018: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism”, Sydney, November 2018. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2018/12/Global-Terrorism-Index-2018-1.pdf , accessed 05.02.2020.

[21] Stenersen, Anne (2009). “Are the Afghan Taliban Involved in International Terrorism?”, in Combating Terrorism Center vol. 2, no. 9, September 2009. Available from: https://ctc.usma.edu/are-the-afghan-taliban-involved-in-international-terrorism-3/

[22] Pape, Robert (2019). “How to Partner With the Taliban”, Foreign Policy, 26.08.2019. Available from: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/26/how-to-partner-with-the-taliban/