The West’s half-hearted efforts will not end Syria’s civil war

Dan Trombly 10.23am

The pressure has increased for more forceful intervention in Syria. Despite the presence of international observers, the Assad regime refuses to adhere to a ceasefire demanded by the UN.

Whether it involves arming the rebels or a repeat of the NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995, the ongoing strife in the country calls for further action, and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry recently urged consideration of both options. Yet despite the frustration of diplomatic efforts, military options seem bleak.

Those who argue that past success in Bosnia could be replicated in Syria both ignore the history of the Bosnian war and its differences with the current conflict. The UN’s attempts to create “safe zones” resulted in the horrific massacres of Srebrenica and elsewhere. The Bosnian war was ultimately won when the numerically superior combined force of Croatian and Bosnian troops launched ground offensives, not when NATO began air strikes.

Similar attempts to implement “safe zones” in Iraq following the first Gulf War required the threat of ground assault in the south of the country, and the tactic failed frequently in the north, such as at Irbil in 1996. Even after the Desert Fox bombing campaign, forces withdrew once a Baghdad supporting faction secured that area. Notably, Saddam Hussein’s rule was not ended until troops fought their way to the capital in 2003, despite “safe zones” having been declared alongside frequent US air patrols and strikes.

In Syria, as in Bosnia and Iraq, neither protection of civilians nor regime change can be assured without superiority on the ground. Even air strikes would require a bombing campaign larger than in Iraq in 2003.

And enormous obstacles stand in the way of arming the Syrian rebels. In Bosnia, for instance, it was Croatia’s invasion that brought about a Serb defeat, not Bosnian forces. In Syria, without a ground invasion of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of troops - from Turkey, the Arab states, or the West - Syria’s rebels will remain woefully outmatched in conventional capabilities. Indeed, Turkey rarely conducts cross-border raids against PKK terrorists without several thousand soldiers.

The Syrian rebels need artillery batteries, armour and air support, not just man-portable anti-tank or anti-aircraft weaponry.

Even with Western air support, the rebels would likely continue to use the guerilla tactics befitting the outmatched force that they are, avoiding pitched battles and ceding territory to draw out hostile forces. While these might be effective tactics in a long-term insurgency, they are unlikely to result in regime change or effective protection of civilians in the short-term. Even the maintenance of a safe haven for rebel forces would need to be done outside Syrian territory, rather than in “safe zones”.

Simply arming rebel forces is more likely to cause a protracted civil war than a quick victory. The United States and others learned this is Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan during the Cold War. But in those cases, there was thought to be some value in attrition, and supporters of proxy groups were relatively indifferent to civilian casualties and the collateral damage of prolonged conflict. In Syria, such outcomes are unjustifiable on humanitarian grounds, nor on strategic aims (seeing Assad depart quickly).

Moreover, an influx of arms leaves lasting consequences. The behaviour of Libyan militias is a case in point.

An authoritarian regime such as Assad’s can hold on until hostile armoured columns roll on Damascus. Therefore the only strategically feasible option for a quick victory in Syria is a full-scale invasion. Yet no Western state is willing to undertake such a mission and a Turkish or Arab effort seems very unlikely.

Ultimately, Syria’s civil war will drag on. In the meantime, Western powers must work with Syria’s neighbours to prevent WMDs and other arms from leaving the country; they must provide aid to refugees that manage to escape Syria; and continue to exercise diplomatic options to the best of their ability.

Unless Western policymakers can convince their own populations and their Middle Eastern allies that an invasion is justifiable, providing military aid or half-hearted intervention can only worsen the consequences of Syria’s conflict - for both that country’s neighbours, and the interests of the West.

Dan Trombly is a student of International Affairs at George Washington University. He blogs at Slouching Towards Columbia.

Better relations with Iran could be key to solving Afghanistan

Aaron Ellis 10.42am

You can’t govern properly by just reacting to events. But that is what the Government’s lauded National Security Council (NSC) does, putting day-to-day crises into a larger context and shaping a strategic response to them.

Speaking in Washington, D.C. several months after its creation, William Hague boasted that the NSC had already made Britain’s policy in Afghanistan strategically “coherent”.

Yet our handling of Iran suggests otherwise. The Iranians ought to be our allies in Afghanistan but Western sabre-rattling towards the Iranian nuclear programme undermines our efforts there. If the Government truly wants to resolve these crises, it must adopt a truly strategic approach. It cannot just react.

It was reported this week that Iran may have tried to exacerbate anti-American riots in Afghanistan in February, after careless US soldiers burned copies of the Qur’an.

The typical reaction of hawks to these stories is to see Tehran’s mischievousness as a sinister bid for global mastery - rather than defensive measures to deter Western military action against them. When Iranian weapons allegedly destined for the Taliban were seized in Afghanistan last April, the former Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, said:

“This confirms my often repeated view of the dangers that Iran poses not only through its nuclear programme, but its continuing policy of destabilising its neighbours. Supplying weapons to help the Taliban kill [ISAF] soldiers is a clear example of the threat they pose.”

The hawk-talk about Iran in Afghanistan adds another stroke to the war drums beaten over Iran of late, but it also undermines the Government’s goals in both countries. It is unlikely that Iran will participate in a regional settlement if we persist in branding it a malign actor. Any solution to the nuclear impasse also grows more difficult to find.

Instead of reacting to these crises separately, the Government must adopt a combined approach. Sound strategic thinking involves reappraising Iran’s role in Afghanistan, recognising that our actions towards one impact the other, and taking various diplomatic steps to achieve the various goals stated above.

Though some actions suggest different, Iran’s interests in Afghanistan coincide with Western objectives. The Government has to be mindful of this. One former senior diplomat has noted, correctly, that Tehran has no “rational interest in continuing instability in [the country], or in a Taliban victory.” This point was covered in great detail in a RAND paper last year.

Given this, why the Iranian mischief-making? The RAND paper’s authors, Alireza Nader and Joya Laha, point out that Iran’s enmity towards the US determines its interests in Afghanistan.

Iranian leaders view the US and coalition presence in Afghanistan with great anxiety, especially in light of the US military threats against Iran’s nuclear facilities. As it has reportedly been employed in Iraq, Iran’s asymmetric strategy would use proxy insurgent forces to tie down and distract the United States from focusing on Iran and its nuclear program, and provides a retaliatory capability in the event of US military action.

The Government has to rethink its rhetoric about Iran, and recognise that country’s involvement in Afghanistan is defensive rather than offensive. We can forget any regional settlement post-2015 if we exclude one of the region’s biggest stakeholders. We must also restart diplomatic dialogue between Tehran and London.

This means first reopening the embassy in Iran. As former diplomat Mark Malloch-Brown has written, “Without embassies the basic function of diplomacy - keeping some kind of dialogue going even when views are diametrically opposed - is essentially suspended.”

Then Britain must begin talks with Iran about how we can co-operate over Afghanistan. If we persuade the Iranians to help, not hinder, the winding down of the war there, it might be easier to negotiate a solution to the nuclear impasse.

Mr Hague once said that the National Security Council would not only minimise the risks we face but also “look for the positive trends in the world, since our security requires seizing opportunity as well as mitigating risk.”

Yet with Iran and Afghanistan, the Government has emphasised risk over opportunity. If we want to achieve our goals, this emphasis must change.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Remember the Falklands and never forget its beginnings

Nik Darlington 8.32am

Today is the 30th anniversary of Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. Events are taking place in Britain, Argentina and on the islands to mark the occasion.

In 1982, 2nd April fell on a Friday, meaning that Parliament met on a Saturday for the first time since the Suez crisis to talk over what Russell Johnston, Liberal MP and member of the Falkland Islands Association, called that “shameful day”.

Julian Amery, the Conservative MP, blamed a lack of preparation and the Government’s defence cuts, lamenting, “the consequences of our defeat yesterday will be a good deal more expensive.”

However heroic, the campaign to recover the Falkland Islands was costly, particularly in the aftermath, albeit not as costly as regularly believed. From 1982 to 2006, the war and the subsequent defence of the islands had a net cost to Britain of approximately £25 billion (2006 prices). The British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), by comparison, was costing £3 billion per year in the early 1990s.

However, no one can put a price on the cost of 258 British and 649 Argentine personnel who lost their lives during the war, nor the many hundreds more wounded in action. It is them who we remember most today.

What of the future defence of the islands, and how to prevent another conflict from breaking out?

The lesson for Mr Cameron’s government, undergoing its own round of defence cuts (especially to long-range naval capability), is to be as prepared as possible.

Argentina, led by her ebullient president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has waged sustained diplomatic skirmishes in the months leading up to the anniversary. Yet this emotional fervour masks a struggling economy and threadbare armed forces.

On the surface, the proxy aggression is irritating rather than damaging. Argentina’s Latin American neighbours murmur their support but few are willing to make too concerted a stand on behalf of the Argentine claims to the islands.

And the Falkland Islands today are relatively well protected by the couple of thousand military personnel at RAF Mount Pleasant, with its four Typhoon aircraft. The state-of-the-art Type 45 destroyer, HMS Dauntless, is also on deployment.

Military sources say that Argentina’s military is largely under-equipped, badly equipped, and - in comparison to 1982 - poorly organised. The generals do not wield the influence they once did, and the funding simply isn’t there to update weaponry and train troops.

The exception, however, is Argentina’s special forces, which I am told are well trained and well resourced. In March 1982, a band of Argentine soldiers disguised as scrap metal workers stole on to the island of South Georgia, south-east of the Falklands, in the first offensive action of the war.

Following the war, South Georgia housed a small garrison of British soldiers, to protect it and surrounding islands from any repeat Argentine invasion. These soldiers were replaced by civilian members of the British Antarctic Survey in 2001.

If even a small detachment of Argentine special forces managed to gain a foothold on South Georgia, or other islands in the group such as Southern Thule (also invaded during the 1970s, but kept quiet by the Callaghan government), it would pose grave problems for Britain’s diplomatic standing.

It might be difficult to justify heavy military retaliation for such a relatively minor action. In all likelihood, it would drag British officials to the negotiating table, precisely where we refuse to be as long as Falkland islanders profess their allegiance to Britain.

As we remember the last Argentina invasion of the Falkland Islands, let us leave no stone unturned, and no entry route open, to prevent any such thing taking place again.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

We must leave the Gordian Knot of Afghanistan

Aaron Ellis 7.30am

‘A blow, expected, repeated, falling on a bruise, with no smart or shock of surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whether another like it could be borne’.

This is how it feels any time a great tragedy is reported from Afghanistan.

One often asks, warily, “Why the hell are we there?”

The deaths of six British servicemen in Helmand last week prompted David Cameron to answer,

“We are there to prevent that country from being a safe haven for al-Qaeda, from where they might plan attacks on the UK or our allies.”

Our troops are not only securing the future of the United Kingdom, but also “the future of the world”.

It became difficult to take seriously such grandiloquent rhetoric by the Prime Minister when, nearly two years ago, he placed an arbitrary deadline on securing the future of the world.

The contradiction is typical of an Afghan policy that Mr. Cameron and the Foreign Secretary William Hague have tied up in knots since the summer of 2010. They should cut themselves free from their bonds as this war is not worth the loss of another British life.

David Cameron and William Hague like to think that they are grand strategists who will reverse the drift of the Labour years and prepare the country for the challenges of the 21st Century.

Perversely, I think one of the tightest knots binding us to Afghanistan was tied by Mr. Cameron trying to pursue this ambition. The myopia of his actions prompted a U-turn that over-committed the UK to a country of only marginal importance. It has put the Tory leaders in an embarrassing position vis-à-vis withdrawal.

On 25th June 2010, the Prime Minister announced that our combat troops would be out of the war by 2015.

“We cannot be there for another five years having effectively been there for nine years already.”

Many pundits saw this deadline and other foreign policy decisions that summer as repeated gaffes. I took a different view; these “gaffes” were part of a deliberate strategy that he and Mr. Hague were pursuing at the time, one which I likened to flying a hot air balloon.

They sensed the turbulent winds heading our way this century and believed that the best way to avoid them was to chuck overboard weighty foreign policy commitments in order to make Britain’s balloon soar higher.

It was for this reason that Mr. Cameron tried to cool the Special Relationship, push away Israel to align closer with Turkey, and reset our relations with India at the expense of Pakistan.

Unless we changed our ways, the Foreign Secretary warned in July, we were set to decline “with all that that means for our influence in world affairs”.

Afghanistan was a commitment that David Cameron and William Hague were unsure about chucking overboard that summer, though the 2015 deadline suggested that they had put it on the edge of the basket.

“By that time we will have been applying ourselves to this [conflict] for 50% longer than we applied ourselves to the Second World War”, Mr. Hague once remarked, in exasperation.

The deadline was also typical of the caution with which the Tory leaders have sometimes viewed the handling of the war. It came just two days after President Obama dismissed General McChrystal as the head of allied forces in Afghanistan, reopening a debate about U.S. strategy that many thought had been settled by the President’s West Point speech several months before. Mr. Cameron may have felt that this was the last straw.

“We cannot be here for another eight years”, he said during a trip to Helmand in December 2009; the strategy that Obama had laid out that month was “our last big chance for success”.

Had the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary stuck to this cautious approach, they would have anticipated the Americans’ sudden desire to “rush to the exit”, allowing them to drop the Afghan commitment.

Yet they quickly restored Afghanistan to its original place in the balloon basket and added to its weight in order to play down the strategic significance of the 2015 announcement. In January, David Cameron signed an agreement with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan which commits us to furnishing his regime with significant financial and military aid for years to come.

At the press conference, Mr. Cameron also made it clear that British combat troops would not leave before 2015, unlike the less dependable French.

The United Kingdom wants “a strong, safe, stable, democratic Afghanistan living in peace and stability with its neighbours”.

Just a few days later, however, the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that America will transition away from a combat role in 2013 and leave in 2014.

The partial U-turn that David Cameron and William Hague made on Afghanistan has now put them in an embarrassing position. If the “primary determinant” of their withdrawal timetable is U.S. policy and if that policy is to “rush to the exit” despite claims to the contrary, Mr. Hague and Mr. Cameron must join that rush just when they have increased our commitment to the country and raised the world-saving stakes of our presence there.

There are many other contradictions in the government’s policy – al-Qaeda is a grave threat to our security, yet we will leave Afghanistan in three years’ time whether or not the group is defeated. We are not there to build a perfect society, yet ministers often emphasise the progress we have made on development and human rights.

If they truly wish to be great, grand strategists, David Cameron and William Hague should not spend their time in office fiddling with the knots binding them to Afghanistan, but cut them altogether. A famous conqueror of that land took a similar approach to knots and he didn’t do too badly…

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

When will Parliament have its proper say about Iran?

Nik Darlington 12.20pm

Last November, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague refused to rule out military action against Iran. Ten days ago, William Hague again refused to rule out military action against Iran. And today, the Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, has signalled a reinforcement of Britain’s military presence in the Gulf - in particular around the strategically important Straits of Hormuz. HMS Argyll already set sail to join US forces at the weekend.

Aaron has an excellent article on the blog this morning, which I strongly encourage you to read. In it, he criticises the blindly relentless march towards war from some quarters, and ineffective sanctions from others. The situation in Iran, always bubbling beneath the surface of the 24/7 news cycle, is escalating terrifyingly fast.

If Britain is genuinely set to commit more troops to the region, out of a combined forces that are already under pressure from the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan, the recent Libyan campaign and the heightened rhetoric surrounding the Falklands, then Parliament must have a say. The case for threats of force towards has not convincingly been made.

Supposing we do reinforce the area through which we receive approximately one-fifth of our oil and more than four-fifths of our LNG, what is the plan? Who, aside from the United States - and predictably enough, Israel - is on our side? China? Russia? The UN? What about the Arab League, so crucial to the Libyan sorties?

These are the questions the Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary and, eventually, the Prime Minister needs to stand up in Parliament and answer. And they need to do it soon.

How do you solve a problem like Iran?

Aaron Ellis 9.58am

This question dominates the news once a year and every politician, pundit, and foreign policy expert has an answer to it. Helpfully, they reduce their answers to a single phrase around the likes of “sanctions” or “war”. Then something else happens in the world and Iran and its nuclear programme fade from the headlines until next year.

And every year these solutions contain the same flaw: they are not part of an overarching strategy.

They are tactics. Those who push them never fully explain how they will solve this Iran Problem.

A few Iranian officials threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz last month if further sanctions were imposed on the country. So began the perennial debate. Should the West attack Iran or negotiate harder? Perhaps apply even more sanctions? The recent murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist (for which Iran has pointed a finger at Israel and the UN) led to op-eds advocating targeted killings as the best solution to the Iran Problem.

As with previous debates, few of those pushing these ‘tactical’ policies put them in the context of a wider strategy to dissuade Tehran from acquiring a nuclear capability. Few of them touched on the trade-offs and unintended consequences of their preferred one-phrase-solutions. We cannot come to an informed decision on what to do about Iran if the solutions are so underdeveloped.

The most underdeveloped is the call for war. It is not clear how military action would change the Iranian regime’s view that a nuclear capability is essential to both its own security and that of the country. Those who push for an attack never offer a strategy that connects an airstrike against an Iranian nuclear facility with Tehran giving up a decades-old ambition. The assumption seems to be that if we blow stuff up then good things will happen.

The Iran debate is a spectrum: “negotiation” sits at the opposite end to “war”. But negotiation has its flaws too. If the Iranian regime believes that a nuclear capability is essential to its security and the West believes that this is unacceptable, then towards what are we negotiating?

“Negotiation” as a solution to the Iran Problem also has trade-offs that some are not prepared to make. One can argue that just as an attack on Iran would legitimise the regime, so could negotiations, as was the case with détente during the Cold War. The Israelis are particularly susceptible to this view, writes nuclear policy expert Mark Hibbs:

“At a time when Israel is bracing for a coming wave of democratic anti-Israeli sentiment from its newly-freed Arab neighbors, Israel will want to invest in a future Iran which, as in the past, was willing to live with Israel in peace. [That] would imply that Israel wouldn’t be interested in a negotiated solution to the nuclear crisis that would legitimate Iran’s current rulers.”

In the middle of the spectrum is the vaguer term “containment”, or applying restrained but continuous pressure against the regime until it yields to Western demands or is overthrown by the Iranian people. The great George F. Kennan devised the idea of containment as a way of avoiding the extremes of war with the Russians and appeasing them, and many think that this is the best approach vis-à-vis Iran.

Both sanctions, of which the EU has just unveiled another collection, and targeted killing come under the rubric “containment”, but they both have just as many trade-offs and indirect consequences as the extremes of the debate. These are rarely touched on by those who advocate them.

Though sanctions are seen by many as an alternative to war, they could lead to it if our application of them is not more discriminating. The respected Iran scholar Gary Sick has warned that if the West completely shuts off the regime’s oil revenues, they will lose the incentive to keep open the Straits of Hormuz. One-fifth of the world’s exported oil production traverses this important waterway per day, as does 85% of the UK’s imported LNG (liquefied natural gas). Any attempt by Tehran to close it “would drive up the price of oil to unforeseeable levels and risk a wider regional war.”

The current debate was given further legs by the death of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan on 11th January. Mr Roshan, who worked at the Natanz nuclear facility, was killed when a magnetic bomb was attached to his car by a mysterious man on a motorcycle. Is targeted killing really the answer, as some op-eds advocated?

As with the one-phrase-solutions discussed above, “targeted killing” has unpleasant trade-offs and indirect consequences. Murders like that of Roshan are acts of terrorism: if countries like the United States and the United Kingdom were to make them policy then how our governments talk about terrorism would need to change. Instead of it being “barbaric”, terrorism would become a tool of statecraft. I like to think of myself as a realist, but one has to accept that foreign policy just isn’t made like this in a democracy.

So how do we solve a problem like Iran? The short answer is that nobody truly knows. President Obama commented in an interview recently that “this isn’t an easy problem, and anybody who claims otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

But if we are to find the right solution to the Iran Problem, then the standard of the debate needs to rise considerably.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

In foreign policy, common values do not mean common interests

Aaron Ellis 11.03am

One of the popular misconceptions in international relations is that countries which share common values automatically possess common interests.

This attitude is historically flawed and a dangerous influence on contemporary policy, pace the attempt to create a European foreign policy. Twenty-five nations with different customs, histories, cultures and economic priorities cannot share a single foreign policy. A series of crises over the last decade from Iraq to the Eurozone are evidence of this fact.

But particularly dangerous is the notion that democracies do not share common interests with autocracies. An example of this kind of thinking is the “league of democracies” idea, advocated by neoconservatives like former US presidential candidate John McCain and the historian Robert Kagan.

Their presumption is that autocracies like China and Russia pose a challenge to western democracies.

“In a world increasingly divided along democratic and autocratic lines, the world’s democrats will have to stick together”, wrote Robert Kagan in The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

This new league would “complement” institutions like the UN, which is to say do things that they can’t do because they can’t get past the Security Council. And it is necessary to do this because, if we don’t, the power of the democratic nations individually will decline and their collective interests will be undermined by stronger, autocratic powers. “History has returned, and the democracies must come together to shape it, or others will shape it for them.”

If their ideas are to be taken seriously, neoconservatives need people to accept that Russia and China pose an existential threat comparable to the Soviet Union and even the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

“The world’s democracies need to begin thinking about how they can protect their interests and defend their principles in a world in which these are once again powerfully challenged.” Robert Kagan’s implicit comparison is wide of the mark, and its dubiousness is reinforced by him and other neocons lumping together the eastern autocracies with Iran and nuclear proliferation and Islamist terrorism and any other evil they see fit to mention.

They also assume that common political values mean common geopolitical interests, which ignores geopolitical realities.

China has as much money invested in the United States as it does in Africa, and Germany has close economic ties with Russia, prompting her to argue against the EU taking an anti-Russian stance. Robert Kagan and others seem to ignore this.

The thinking behind the ‘league’ and similarly grand schemes is that democracies do not go to war with one another, which is taken seriously only by people who don’t know any history.

Both the American War of Independence and the War of 1812 were waged between a republic and a constitutional monarchy with representative institutions. Finland also declared war on Britain during the Second World War after the German invasion of the Soviet Union brought the Russians on to the Allied side.

As a proposition, the “democratic peace theory” also ignores the many times democracies have almost gone to war. Throughout the later 19th century there were numerous occasions when conflict could have broken out between either Britain and the United States or Britain and France. It wasn’t the pacifist will of the people that prevented fighting, rather it was the secret diplomacy of national elites.

Those people who believe that different political systems cannot be comfortable allies also ignore the many instances when they have been. The Allies in the Second World War are often cited, but there are other less-well-known examples like the strong relationship between France and Tsarist Russia and the Anglo-Japanese alliance at the turn of the 20th century.

Lord Palmerston’s line about ‘no permanent friends, only permanent interests’ is hackneyed but nonetheless true. There is no reason why democracies cannot share strategic interests with autocracies, either historically or today.

Neoconservatives pose a threat to world peace by insisting this can’t be the case.

“Great disasters,” wrote the historian A. J. P. Taylor, “are caused by trying to learn from history and correct past mistakes…it is probably best to think about the present, not about the past.”

China and Russia today are not Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union. To treat them as such would be perilous. Why make unnecessary enemies?

We choose our allies and our enemies according to our interests. To think differently is to go against many of the basics of good statecraft and risks committing us to unnecessary wars.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Talking with the Taliban

Alexander Pannett 7.45am

On Tuesday the Taliban announced that they had agreed to open an office in Qatar.  This comes after years of failed attempts by Western diplomats to seek a negotiated end to the decade long war in Afghanistan.  The recent breakthrough is the result of a concerted effort by American and German diplomats to convince the Taliban to establish a talking shop in a neutral country.

This achievement is impressive considering the concept of peace talks appeared to have been killed off with the assassination of President Karzai’s peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September.

The deteriorating relationship between the US and Pakistan had made it unlikely that negotiations could have been held that included all the major interests in the conflict.  Pakistan has a large degree of unofficial control over the Taliban, playing host to most of its leadership and allegedly providing logistical support and training.  Without Pakistani acquiescence, negotiations with the Taliban would have few fecund consequences.

It has been reported in the Guardian that the establishment of a diplomatic office will come at a price.  Several high-ranking Taliban officials will be released from Guantanamo Bay in return.  Allegedly, these Taliban will include Mullar Khair Khowa, a former interior minister, and Noorullah Noori, a former governor in Afghanistan.

Whilst the diplomatic development should be applauded, there have been many previous soporific starts when dealing with the Taliban.  Michael Semple, a former UN official with more than two decades of experience in Afghanistan, was expelled by President Karzai for attempting to open negotiations with the Taliban as this allegedly undermined the authority of one of Karzai’s brothers. One Taliban impostor infamously stole thousands of dollars in cash incentives for entering into talks.

It is also unclear as to whether the Taliban officials who arrive in Qatar will be able to vouch for the entirety of the Taliban.  Increasing “decapitation” attacks by Western special forces that have targeted the Taliban leadership have been very effective in mitigating insurgency operations but it has also eroded the Taliban based in Pakistan’s control over commanders on the ground in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are not comprised of a centralised and homogenous organisation but an affiliation loosely unified by its Pashtun ethnicity and bound by adherence to similar ideological beliefs. Many of the fighters who follow the Taliban’s cause are influenced by myopic issues local to their village or town. The heroin trade also accounts for much of the insurgency in Afghanistan as well as a dislike of non-Pashtun government officials having control over Pashtun areas.  None of these issues will be resolved by negotiating with Taliban leaders exiled in Pakistan.

Despite the potential failures and unlikelihood that the new diplomatic initiative will reach a political settlement in the short term, it must be heralded as a new chapter in the war in Afghanistan. 

Its success will be marked by the concessions that both sides will now be prepared to make.  NATO will have to show increased temperance in its bombing of the Taliban and in return, the Taliban will have to reform some of its more unpalatable ideological demands, especially its treatment of women. 

The road to peace will be long and hard, but as the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland shows, even the most bitter and long-divided of enemies can reach compromises for the sake of the communities that they serve.

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