As Eide acknowledges in this first public confirmation of his covert conversations with the jihadists of Taliban there have been and continue to be many different channels of communication between elements of Taliban as well as associated insurgent groups and the Karzai government--and foreign supporters of the Kabul regime. Back channel talks are not only to be expected; they are required if an internal war is to be brought to an end.
It deserves mention that Mr Eide gives pride of place to diplomatic conversations and downplays the role of military operations in Afghanistan. This framing is not surprising. Diplomats have an unfortunate propensity to disconnect talking and shooting. The diplomatic mind has a very real block against accepting the truth of the hoary dictum that war is the continuation of politics by violent means.
Mr Eide's personal block is evident when he fails to admit that the only reason any member of Taliban's leadership cadre is willing to come to Dubai and meet the Man From the UN is that the trigger pullers of Taliban are under heavy military pressure. He is able to grant that the conversations could not have occurred without the knowledge and approval of Mullah Omar. He is not equally able to grant that Omar's motivation came from the simple fact that Taliban was further from a battlefield victory rather than closer.
Another politician turned diplomat who shares the same blinkered view of the relationship between military force and diplomatic processes is the current British Foreign Minister, David Miliband. At MIT earlier this month Mr Miliband outdid the Beatles in singing, "Give Peace A Chance" with his roadmap for negotiations on the neutral turf of the UN.
It is time for Mr Miliband and former special envoy Eide to get a grip.
Internal wars, insurgencies, end in two stages. In the first, hostilities termination, the shooting stops. In the second much longer and hazier one, conflict resolution, the former belligerents seek to form a stable political dynamic of shared power with the goal of a better state of peace.
Hostilities termination occurs either when one of the warring parties loses the political will or material capacity to wage war or when both combatants recognize that neither can shoot its way to unquestioned political authority. The historical record demonstrates that the first impetus is the more common one.
One side or the other, usually the side with the least at stake as in the case of England during the American War of Independence or the US in the Vietnam War, concludes the rewards of potential victory are not worth the actual costs. Or, as in the case of the American Civil War or the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, one side is militarily defeated in a quite decisive way.
The second form, the one in which each side comes to realize it cannot achieve unchallenged political authority on the battlefield may be less common but it is the paradigm governing events in Afghanistan. The human terrain upon which the war is being waged is of a nature that neither the government nor the insurgents can achieve unquestioned authority at an acceptable level of casualties and overall social disruption.
The only reason that Taliban is entertaining this view is the pressure it is now under with the increase in US and ISAF troop strength as well as the more effective and far more aggressive operational concepts of General McChrystal. Absent these new realities and the costs they have imposed upon Taliban the insurgents could confidently expect military success leading to unchallenged political authority in Afghanistan.
This does not mean the current and projected military operations will lead to anything approximating "victory" as such is commonly understood. They can't. And, they won't. They can, however, provide the impetus to hostilities termination on the part of Taliban. Not all Talib to be sure, not the hardest of the hard core, the Truest of the True Believers. They won't come to talk--only to die.
But for the others, the less than True Believers, the opportunists, those always ready to engage in the history hallowed Afghan tradition of changing sides, the pragmatists who want to both remain alive and gain some measure of power in the post-war political environment, the option of hostilities termination is attractive. These folks, who number among them Mullah Omar, will be willing to exchange endless palaver for sleeping in the rain, eating bad food, and getting shot at.
It is for this reason that the "golden bridge" of covert conversations leading to open negotiations must remain in place. It is for this reason also that the military pressure must continue, even increase. One of the overlook-at-your-own-peril lessons of the Korean War is that the willingness and ability to continue shooting and dying even after negotiations start is the sine qua non of ultimate success in achieving hostilities termination.
Conflict resolution is the sole province of the Afghans. Outsiders, including the all-too-often hailed UN, can play only a minor supporting role which perforce must diminish over time. It must be recognized by all outsiders whether the US or Pakistan or India or Iran that their utility as well as their influence over the details and final outcome of conflict resolution is marginal at best.
Indeed the best role for the US (or the UN or the EU) to play during the conflict resolution stage is to block the efforts of Pakistan, Iran, and India to pursue their vastly different agendas through interference in the necessarily indigenous process of conflict resolution. Outside meddling will both prolong and make even more messy the inevitably long and aesthetically displeasing process of resolving the conflicts between the Kabul government and the several insurgent groups.
Arguably it was the efforts of Pakistan in furtherance of its national and strategic interests twenty years ago which made the current war nearly inevitable. Since Pakistan, Iran, India are not selfless and disinterested parties, their machinations must be thwarted if authentic conflict resolution is to occur.
(The same warning applies with respect to hostilities termination. There is good reason to accept the proposition that Pakistan mounted its flurry of arrests in order to prevent movement toward stopping the shooting.)
The takeaway is twofold. First, hostilities termination requires that shooting and talking proceed in tandem. Second, conflict resolution is owned solely by the Afghans so it will be long, messy, and somewhat yucky to American and European observers in its final form.
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