Terms for peace in Afghanistan
NEWS OF peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban will force the United States to deal with tormenting questions. No doubt any peaceful ending to the brutal, draining conflict in Afghanistan deserves consideration. As underlined by incidents in which American bombs killed scores of Afghan civilians, a protracted US and NATO involvement in Afghanistan's civil war will surely produce more human tragedies.
Nevertheless, a peace that exposes Afghan women and girls to the Taliban's fanatical version of Islamic law would also spell tragedy. The Taliban recently stoned a woman to death for eloping with someone other than the man with whom her marriage had been arranged. The Taliban even now are burning down schools for girls and flinging acid in the faces of girls going to school.
So any peace accord between the Taliban and the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai must include protections for Afghan women and girls. According to a revelatory report by Dexter Filkins of The New York Times, Karzai's government is negotiating, through intermediaries, with Taliban chief Mullah Omar and the infamous allied warlords Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Sirajuddin Haqqani. In the talks, Karzai must insist that there can be no cease-fire or withdrawal of US troops unless the Taliban and its allies agree to respect basic human rights, under whatever postwar power-sharing arrangement may be forged.
The main leaders of the insurgency reportedly have agreed among themselves to go for a negotiated end to the war. And they have made known to the go-betweens their opening conditions for laying down arms.
They are asking US and NATO forces to retreat to their bases in a first stage, and to withdraw entirely from the country over 18 months. They want the Western troops to be replaced by peacekeepers drawn primarily from Muslim countries. Then they would accept countrywide elections.
The timetable, the peacekeepers, and elections are all terms that can be negotiated. These are established methods for ending a war neither side can win decisively within a tolerable span of time. But Karzai and the Obama administration must first make sure that their conditions are met. Beyond legal protections for women and girls, and for the human rights of all Afghans, these must include Taliban commitments not to shelter Al Qaeda or other terrorists and not to prevent Afghan boys and girls from receiving a genuine education.
Afghans have long practice in negotiating an end to their wars. In this case, the American contribution should be to insist on obtaining acceptable peace terms. 