The Myth of the Two Talibans

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version Dr. Walid Phares In an interview with the New York Times this week (March 7), President Barack Obama said he "hopes U.S. troops can identify moderate elements of the Taliban and move them toward reconciliation." The proposition came as a conclusion to a larger picture: the battlefield situation in Afghanistan. According to the New York Times he said the United States "was not winning the war in that country" and thus the door must be opened to a "reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq." Following these statements a flurry of comments exploded throughout the international media: while most of the mainstream press and networks in the West praised the "new daring turn" in US policy, that is, the readiness to "engage the Taliban," most of the pan Arabist and Jihadi sympathizer outlets in the region warned the move won't be successful. In a panel discussion on BBC TV Arabic in which I participated, a noted expert in Islamist affairs from Amman said "there is no such thing as Taliban independent from the high ups like Mullah Umar." Another panelist, a seasoned Afghan journalist from Kabul added: "In Iraq, you have a bigger US force, and a totally different geopolitical context than in Afghanistan. Besides, he added, why would Washington want to engage a Terror force which is not accepted by the population?" This was a small sampling of the brouhaha reigning in the debate about the real strategic intentions of the Obama Administration. The Imbroglio of Good and Bad Taliban In fact by my observations, it is even more complicated than that: the US Administration is being advised that any change in strategy in Afghanistan is better than the previous situation. It is being told that the surge model as applied in Iraq may work, if modified to meet Afghanistan's "complexities." The President must also be attracted to the idea that an "engagement" with some quarters of the Taliban will fit perfectly with the global idea of engagement, sit down and listening that he seems to have adopted for the entire region. But many questions still need to be answered. Does the plan require a dialogue with the Taliban organization as a whole or with elements "within" the organization? Apparently the US channel is to be established with "elements" not with the leadership of the network. Then the next question is: if they aren't part of the top leadership, are these elements able to sway the entire organization towards engagement? Apparently not, according to experts on the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So, the goal is to sway these factions - called moderates - from the Taliban, not to steer the entire group in another direction. Here we have to pause and come to the first "complex" conclusion: while President Hamid Karzai has extended an olive branch to Mullah Omar to join the Government, an invitation quickly rejected, President Obama is announcing a more modest goal that is to identify "moderate elements" from the Taliban and "strike a deal with them." But the modest narrative of the goal doesn't make it necessarily reachable. Here is why. If the "moderate Taliban" we're looking to identify are "inside" the network, when they engage with the US, they will be lethally ejected by the hard core of the group, backed by al Qaeda. Hence the next question will be to know if those "dissidents" would actually secede and form a "moderate Taliban" organization working with the US and the Karzai Government. From the names available on such a list, including the former "Taliban ambassadors" to Pakistan and the international community and those who sought Saudi Arabia's help in launching a dialogue, we can't see strong commanders willing to surge militarily against the mother ship. As far as we can project, there are no leaders and radical clerics who would carry that task of establishing an all-out new "good Taliban," even with millions of dollars as incentive. A Taliban civil war is not going to happen, for now. But is there another more attainable goal? According to the Obama Administration and some experts, there may be other options. Little "talibans?" In recent months a new concept has been pushed via the Defense and counter terrorism circles arguing that instead of chipping off from the actual "Taliban" militia on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, attention must be focusing on harvesting the local "taliban" (little ts). According to this theory, the little "ts" are individuals and groups who have joined the large umbrella under Mullah Umar but not the membership of the organization, or have proclaimed themselves as "taliban affiliates." Hence, in comparison with the Iraqi Sahwa movement backed by US Coalition, these sub-militias of all walks of life would become the target of American political charm and dollars. If identified and reached out to - so believe the architects of the forthcoming Afghan "surge" - they will become the Afghani parallel to the Sahwas of Mesopotamia. Note that President Obama specified that it will be the "American military who would reach out to these moderate elements." Meaning they will be dealt with from a lower level rather than from a full fledged diplomatic perspective. In that case, unlike what the media has been speculating about, this is not a US dialogue with the party it is at war with, headed by Mullah Umar and his emirs. It is not even an attempt to break the mother ship into two and recuperate the more moderate branch. There are no takers for a massive retreat from the Taliban into the arms of Kabul's Government or Washington's "infidel" generosity. What the US move is about is much more pragmatic and realistic: nibbling off from the wide pool of angry people and shifting them from frustration with Karzai to enmity towards Umar. Indeed, there are tens of thousands of armed males aggregating in villages, clans, tribes and neighborhoods, who wear turbans and sometimes claim they are Taliban for a thousand reasons. These sub-militias aren't particularly ideological or maybe do not even understand much of the doctrine they claim following. A number of experts and some strategists believe today that these men of the Afghan underworld can become the "new army" against the "bad Taliban." Can they? In fact not only it is possible but it should have been the case eight years ago. However, there are two fundamental mistakes not to make. Don't announce them as the "moderates" First, the Obama Administration and the US military strategists must not see these new war constituents, nor announce them as who they aren't. These sub-militias sought to turn the tide against the real Taliban aren't your "moderate" guys. In reality they have no firm ideological affiliation. With few exceptions perhaps, the tribal and urban forces to be targeted for "integration" will simply shift alliances or allegiance for money and power. The American, Western and international public must not be led to believe that a piece of architecture will be successful in transforming radicals into moderates or swaying away bands of armed men from extremism, let alone Jihadism. The mutation to moderation happens not via cash deals but through years of schooling, an efficient media and perseverant NGO work. It happens from younger into older age. Hence forget about the "identification of moderate" part of the Obama strategy. Inducing civil societies into liberalism, or even moderation, needs Government crafting of a kind that doesn't exist in Washington or Brussels for the time being. In addition, these militias and militants to be swayed away from Waziristan's exiles aren't going to produce a national reconciliation. They do not represent the radical ideological web which is behind the war against the new Afghan democracy. National reconciliation takes place between two or more large, historical and strategic forces. Instead we're talking about recuperation of elements extracted from the Taliban, not reconciliation with the latter. Hence US stated goals should be even more modest in this regard. Don't call them "taliban" The second fatal mistake not to commit is to call them Taliban, proto-Taliban or crypto-Taliban. Even if for publicity purposes it suits the goal of soothing the US and Western public, constructing a fictive identity to a plethora of tribal-urban sub militias will backfire on the whole campaign. Here is why. Since they aren't a breakaway faction from the main organization, they can't form another Taliban to challenge the Mullah Umar leadership. And since they have no ideology of their own they won't be able to de-radicalize others. Hence if they are baptized as the other "taliban," instead of using the credibility of the name to push back against the bad guys, the name will ultimately transform them into what we don't want them to be: Taliban! Void will be filled by the forces with a greater doctrinal power, forceful clerics, and historical leadership. If we call them nice Taliban or "little ts" we would be throwing them back into the arms of the forces we want to sway them from. Knowing what I know from the Jihadist strategies, it won't take long before the two Talibans would eventually sit down and strike a deal, and overwhelm the Kabul Government. Learn from Iraq If the Iraq Sahwa model is the inspiration for an Afghan engagement with local forces, we need to learn the right lessons from it. In Iraq, the US didn't create good al Qaeda versus bad al Qaeda; it didn't identify moderate elements from al Qaeda to pit them against the mother force. The political dimension of the surge, relied heavily on recruiting tribes, social cadres and Sunni elements regardless of their affiliations and empowering them via a "new" organization, called Sahwa Councils. We gave these new local allies an identity of their own, not the identity of the forces they fought. But more important, the greater dimension of the surge wasn't the mere rise of the Sahwas but the moving forward of the democratic political process with its political parties, NGOs, movements and media. Swaying Sunni militias against al Qaeda was only one component of the strategy; the larger strategy was to sustain pressures until Iraqi forces, legislators and ministries are up and running. By comparison in Afghanistan, we should make the case of a similar, not necessarily identical process: mobilizing popular militias, giving them an identity of their own, not calling them Taliban, and not expecting them to be the missing link to the future but a force helpful in pushing the political process forward until it can resist, contain and reverse the Taliban. How to measure victory and defeat President Obama, and before him President Bush, were always trying to measure the success in the war in Afghanistan. While the latter spoke of victories, our current President speaks of failures. The real issue is how to measure victory or defeat. Is destroying al Qaeda and Taliban bunkers a definitive indicator of victory? Are the relentless terror attacks by the Jihadists the other definitive measurement of failures? I don't think either parameter gives us an answer. Rather it is the battle taking place over the conquest of the minds and hearts of the school children and teens of the country that will make or break that burgeoning Democracy. Unfortunately neither the past nor the current Administration seems to see the war of ideas with such urgency. Let's be accurate and transparent My recommendation to the Obama Administration is to be relentlessly accurate in describing the choices it intends to make in Afghanistan and in the confrontation with the Jihadists worldwide. If its final intention is to cut a deal with the Taliban - in this article I won't argue about the choice - it must faithfully inform the US public of this choice instead of developing a phased narrative of disengagement. But if it seriously intends to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda by isolating them further inside Afghanistan and mobilizing the international community, the Administration also needs to prepare the American and Western public for that choice. For in this age of hyper globalization, the Jihadi forces have an astonishing capacity to outmaneuver the smartest strategies devised by their enemies and, on the other hand, the public here at home has developed a surprising ability to understand the intentions of both the Terror forces and of its own Government. Transparency is everything in this age. FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.