An Open Letter to the Taliban | The New Yorker

By Barnett Rubin

Your February 14, 2018, open letter to the American people asked us to “evaluate the future of American forces in light of the prevailing realities” in Afghanistan. I can answer only for myself, as an academic and former American diplomat who has been trying to understand Afghanistan’s realities for thirty-five years. Many Afghans claim that any answer should go not to you but to the Pakistani generals and intelligence operatives who shelter your movement. I disagree. I have interacted with you directly and indirectly since January, 1997, when I chaired a meeting at Columbia University with a delegation you sent to New York to ask for Afghanistan’s seat at the United Nations. I have concluded that your opponents underestimate your independence and abilities. But you may also underestimate theirs.

On Wednesday, the Afghan government will host a second meeting of the Kabul Conference, an effort to begin peace talks, which will be attended by twenty-three countries. The United Nations announced earlier this month that ten thousand Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in Afghanistan in 2017, two-thirds of them in anti-government attacks.

You highlight the civilian casualties inflicted by U.S. air power, the shame of Guantánamo, and the losses suffered by American soldiers and their families. I would cite the thousands of Afghan civilian casualties inflicted by your attacks and suicide bombings. The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan last fall. In less than three months, Afghans submitted accounts of 1.17 million atrocities. I prefer to respond here to your appeal for dialogue.

Few would disagree with your call “to solve the Afghan issue through peaceful dialogues,” if they thought it were possible. On January 29th, after your organization used a car bomb disguised as an ambulance to kill nearly a hundred people in Kabul, President Trump did say, “I don’t think we’re prepared to talk right now.” That was an impulse, not a strategy. As you yourself observed on Monday, “the United States has kept the doors of dialogue open for the Taliban.”

The flaw in your call for dialogue is that it is addressed only to Americans, not your fellow Afghans. You accuse Afghans opposing you of “committing treason against our nation,” but the government of Afghanistan, corrupt and divided as it may be, is recognized by every nation in the world—not just Washington and its allies. Your dialogue with the U.S. government cannot replace dialogue with that government and the millions of other Afghans who fear your attacks and your return. Trying to exclude them repeats the mistake the U.S. made by excluding you.

The list of missed opportunities for peace in Afghanistan since 2001 is long. On December 6, 2001, your leaders signed an agreement with Hamid Karzai, who had just been named the chairman of Afghanistan’s interim administration at talks convened by the United Nations in Bonn. You agreed to a truce and handed over the four provinces you still controlled to Karzai’s government. In return, you did not ask for government positions—just an amnesty that would allow you to live in dignity. - Read More 

An Open Letter to the Taliban | The New Yorker

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