The Taliban have made steps towards wanting to be seen as a legitimate political force, by setting up an operations office in Qatar on 18 June this year. The First Wednesday discussion chaired by Paddy O’Connell at the Frontline Club on 3 July asked: Is talking to the Taliban a solution?
Dawood Azami, Frank Ledwidge, Lucy Morgan Edwards. Credit: Sally Ashley-Cound
John D McHugh, a multimedia journalist and filmmaker said that talking to the Taliban is the only option:
“Politics is the solution to war so sooner or later we’ve got to talk to these f—ckers so let’s make it sooner and lets ease the pain.”
Not long into the discussion, basic problems in communicating between different parties involved were brought up – what language would talks be held in?
Dawood Azami a journalist working for the BBC World Service replied:
“If you don’t speak the language you cannot communicate, you don’t understand the complexities of the situation… There are so many players; there’s history, ideology, nationalism, grievances…and so many other things.”
It was also unclear as to who Western negotiators would be talking to as Frank Ledwidge, former Naval reserve military intelligence officer said:
“They – whoever ‘they’ are – are the opposition [whether the officials in Qatar or local fighters on the ground] . . . the time has come to stop fighting for the sake of fighting. However we put it, what we have is existential war.”
https://twitter.com/MWStory/status/352495888985387008
If talks were to be held, would the office in Qatar even reflect what’s going on in the ground? Azami replied:
“It’s the other way around. People on the ground have control over people in in Doha. . . . They don’t control the fighters, the commanders. The commanders have more power than those in the Doha office.”
McHugh said that there is a difference between “those who claim to be in command and those who are doing the nasty… fighting and killing – the disconnect is huge. . . . There are people in Qatar that are saying they can do X, Y and Z, and I’m not convinced that they can at all.”
An Afghan audience member added:
“People in Afghanistan… now believe this is a conspiracy. A game. The Americans are leaving, that we’re going to be left alone; who knows what happens. We’re going to be handed over to the Pakistani government. . . . We need more transparency.”
McHugh reiterated that there was concern over the lack of transparency in talks as a friend on the ground had told him:
“The lack of transparency is the biggest fear. He said ‘we don’t know what’s being talked about’. . . . There’s a fear that concessions are going to be made.”
Lucy Morgan Edwards, author and researcher at Exeter University agreed:
“Talks, if they did happen are likely to happen behind closed doors and run by foreigners. I believe they should be run by Afghans.”
However any talks taking place could seem halfhearted, with the knowledge that the West will be pulling out of Afghanistan in 2014.
Ledwidge felt that the British have no say at all:
“People pulling the strings here are not British diplomats – nobody trusts us and we have no influence anyway. The US and Pakistan, they’re the players here.”
McHugh continued:
“We [the West] look like people who are trying to get out and will talk to pretty much anyone who offers a way of getting out and saving face.”
A member of the audience, who had served with Ledwidge in Iraq, suggested the West needs to be smarter in the way they use military force alongside talks:
“There is a much more fluid situation . . . where people are quite willing to pursue talking and at the same time to apply military pressure and to very skillfully weave those two things together. . . . Using the violence in order to further the talks. The Taliban are more skilled at doing this because, quite frankly, they’ve had more practice.”
O’Connell asked what the panel thought should, or would happen to bring about successful talks.
Ledwidge said that the most successful peace conference would involve “all parties, all surrounding countries, all interested nations without preconditions and you talk to whoever will talk back.”
McHugh added:
“If Pakistan are not involved you’ve no hope.”
@frontlineclub @LMorganEdwards #Pakistan holds all the cards here. #Taliban #Afghanistan @frontlineclub #BBC
— Roxanna Shapour (@roxbox2) July 3, 2013
Azami finished by saying:
“Afghanistan has been a battlefield for other countries adventures… They deserve peace and the rest of the world should help them.”
Watch the full discussion here:
https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-is-talking-to
]]>How have the lives of the Afghan people been affected during the 10 years since the US-led invasion of the country in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States?
That was the focus of October’s First Wednesday discussion at Frontline Club, which was hosted by Paddy O’Connell, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
Amid a catalogue of failures and missed opportunities outlined by the panel, Horia Mosadiq, Afghanistan researcher for Amnesty International, insisted that there have been "tremendous positive changes" in the lives of women since Operation Enduring Freedom was launched by the US government in October 2001.
Women have experienced improvements in education, healthcare, freedom of expression and improved political participation, rights and freedom of movement, said Mosadiq: "No one is lashing you for not walking with a man."
Dawood Azami, a journalist working for the BBC World Service in London and a visiting scholar, said that in a decade during which 10,000 Afghans had been killed people’s experience was of "one step forward and two steps back":
"There are signs of improvement in media, education, in construction and communications, but the biggest challenge that Afghans have today and for the past 10 years is insecurity followed by bad governance."
Violence has increased in a country where war has become a part of life for Afghan people:
"But there was always an outside actor they blamed for using the country for their own strategic interests," Azami said.
Lucy Morgan Edwards, former political advisor to the EU Ambassador in Kabul, was not convinced that the Afghan leadership wanted peace talks and argued that the international community had squandered a "golden opportunity" in 2001 to have the ultimate Taliban reconciliation with the Haqqani network and Abdul Haq, the Pashtun mujahideen commander who was executed by the Taliban in 2001 and the the former king Zahir Shah, who died in 2007:
"I’m afraid we blew it and it’s far more complicated now to deal with it," said Morgan Edwards who added that one of the biggest mistakes made by the international community was the "real politik of basically hiring these warlords to do our dirty work":
"They were not thinking in the long term and are now wondering why the place is so corrupt and why there is so much intimidation and violence in the regions," she said.
Looking ahead, Mosadiq said that Afghans across the country had told her that if the international forces leave in 2014 their greatest concern was the legacy it would leave behind:
"Are they going to leave us institutions that are strong and can protect Afghans against harm? Are they going to leave Afghanistan in a situation where we can restore rule of law and have a functioning government?
"Many Afghan women believe there ahead of talks with the Taliban there are already behind doors discussions and compromises that are happening and unfortunately women’s rights will be sacrificed," said Mosadiq, who rejected any "romanticised" ideas that Afghans wanted the return of the Taliban.
"In south Afghanistan people say we can defend ourselves against the Taliban, we can just kick them out of the village, but we don’t know if under the new reconciliation process the same Taliban commander will return as district governor and he’s going to massacre me and the whole village."
Edward Girardet, journalist, writer and producer who has reported widely from humanitarian and conflict zones, described Afghanistan as a "traumatised nation" and added that it was in need of "intelligent" recovery programmes and investment that did not involve bringing in "massive outside corporations" that require mercenaries to protect them.
"We cannot go back to 2001 but we can go back to the basics," said Girardet, who warned against repeating the mistake of the 1990s when Afghanistan was "totally abandoned":
"The international community needs to remain involved with Aghanistan, but much more intelligently," he concluded. "It doesn’t need these billions of dollars being thrown at it, it needs intelligent development."
The hashtag for this event is #fcfw
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