"The principal failure in Afghanistan was, .. to fail to learn, from our previous struggles with terrorism, that you only get to a lasting peace when you have an inclusive negotiation – not when you try to impose a settlement by force. In Northern Ireland we tried making peace at Sunningdale in 1973, in the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985, and in the Downing Street Declaration in 1993 – each time excluding Sinn Féin, and each time we failed to end the Troubles. Having tried everything else, we finally had to talk to the men with guns, and that is why the Good Friday agreement succeeded.
In Afghanistan we repeated the earlier errors in Northern Ireland. The first missed opportunity was 2002-04. I am as much to blame as anyone else, since I was in government at the time. After the Taliban collapsed, they sued for peace.
Instead of engaging them in an inclusive process and giving them a stake in the new Afghanistan, the Americans continued to pursue them, and they returned to fighting.
After I left Downing Street, I argued in the Guardian for talking to the Taliban but was contradicted by those still in government, who said it was OK to talk to the IRA and the PLO but not the insurgents in Afghanistan.
There were repeated concrete opportunities to start negotiations with the Taliban from then on – at a time when they were much weaker than today and open to a settlement – but political leaders were too squeamish to be seen publicly dealing with a terrorist group.
When the US did start negotiating with the Taliban in 2014 it was to secure the release of Bowe Bergdahl, a kidnapped US soldier. And when official political negotiations finally started in 2018 they were bilateral; failed to include the Afghan government; focused primarily on Taliban undertakings not to host al-Qaida rather than an inclusive internal settlement; and
President Trump constantly undercut his negotiators by signalling his intention to leave unilaterally.
Even this year, inclusive negotiations could have succeeded under President Biden, but not
after it became clear that US forces were going to leave regardless of any conditions being agreed. All the Taliban had to do was wait.
.
.
We have to rethink our strategy unless we want to spend the next 20 years making the same mistakes over and over again. Wars don’t end for good until you talk to the men with the guns."
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, and chief British negotiator on Northern Ireland, between 1995 and 2007
Worth reading the entire article.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/10/lesson-9-11-peace-taliban
