[R-G] Afghan talks widen US-UK rift

[Anthony Fenton]

Oct 11, 2008
	
http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JJ11Ag03.html

Afghan talks widen US-UK rift
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The beginning of political talks between the Afghan  
government and the Taliban, revealed by press accounts this week, is  
likely to deepen the rift that has just erupted in public between the  
United States and Britain over the US commitment to an escalation of  
the war in Afghanistan.

According to a French diplomatic cable leaked to a French magazine  
last week, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is looking for  
an exit strategy from Afghanistan rather than an endless war, and it  
sees a US escalation of the war as an alternative to a political  
settlement rather than as supporting such an outcome.

The first meetings between the two sides were held in Saudi Arabia in  
the presence of Saudi King Abdullah from September 24 to 27, as  
reported by CNN's Nic Robertson from London on Tuesday. Eleven Taliban  
delegates, two Afghan government officials and a representative of  
independent former mujahideen commander Gulfadin Hekmatyar  
participated in the meetings, according to Robertson.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith of the British command in Afghanistan  
enthusiastically welcomed such talks. He was quoted by The Sunday  
Times of London as saying, "We want to change the nature of the debate  
from one where disputes are settled through the barrel of the gun to  
one where it is done through negotiations."

If the Taliban were prepared to talk about a political settlement,  
said Carleton-Smith, "that's precisely the sort of the progress that  
concludes insurgencies like this."

The George W Bush administration, however, was evidently taken by  
surprise by news of the Afghan peace talks and decidedly cool toward  
them. One US official told The Washington Times that it was unclear  
that the meetings in Saudi Arabia presage government peace talks with  
the Taliban. The implication was that the administration would not  
welcome such talks.

A US defense official in Afghanistan told the paper the Bush  
administration was "surprised" it had not been informed about the  
meeting in advance by the Afghan government.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on his way to discuss Afghanistan with  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers in Budapest, made  
it clear that the Bush administration supports talks only for the  
purposes of attracting individual leaders to leave the Taliban and  
join the government. "What is important is detaching those who are  
reconcilable and who are willing to be part of the future of the  
country from those who are irreconcilable,"he said.

Gates said he drew line at talks with the head of the Taliban, Mullah  
Mohammad Omar.

However, representatives of the Taliban leader are apparently involved  
in the talks, and President Hamid Karzai is committed to going well  
beyond the tactic of appealing to individual Taliban figures.

Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in a news conference  
on October 4 that resolution of the conflict required a "political  
settlement with the Taliban". He added that such a settlement would  
come only "after Taliban's acceptance of the Afghan constitution and  
the peaceful rotation of power by democratic means."

The Afghan talks come against the backdrop of a Bush administration  
decision to send 8,000 more US troops to Afghanistan next year, and  
the expressed desire of the US commander, General David D McKiernan,  
for yet another 15,000 combat and support troops. Both Democratic  
candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain have said  
they would increase US troop strength in Afghanistan.

Obama has said he would send troops now scheduled to remain in Iraq  
until next summer to Afghanistan as an urgent priority, whereas McCain  
has not said when or how he would increase the troop level.

Such a US troop increase is exactly what the British fear, however.  
The British ambassador in Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, was  
quoted in a diplomatic cable leaked to the French investigative  
magazine Le Canard Enchaine last week as telling the French deputy  
ambassador that the US presidential candidates "must be dissuaded from  
getting further bogged down in Afghanistan".

In the French diplomatic report of the September 2 conversation,  
Cowper-Coles is reported as saying that an increase in foreign troop  
strength in Afghanistan would only exacerbate the overall political  
problem in Afghanistan.

The report has the ambassador saying that such an increase "would  
identify us even more strongly as an occupation force and would  
multiply the targets" for the insurgents.

Cowper-Coles is quoted as saying foreign forces are the "lifeline"of  
the Afghan regime and that additional forces would "slow down and  
complicate a possible emergence from the crisis".

In an obvious reference to the intention to rely on higher levels of  
military force, Cowper-Coles said US strategy in Afghanistan "is  
destined to fail".

Cowper-Coles is reported to have put much of the blame for the  
deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan on the Karzai  
government. "The security situation is getting worse,"the report  
quoted him as saying. "So is corruption, and the government had lost  
all trust."

The report makes it clear that the British want to withdraw all their  
troops from Afghanistan within five to 10 years. Cowper-Coles is said  
to have suggested that the only way to do so is through the emergence  
of what he called an "acceptable dictator".

The British foreign office has denied that the report reflected the  
policy of the government itself. Nevertheless, statements by Brigadier  
Carleton-Smith, the senior British commander in Afghanistan, last  
week, underlined the gulf between US and British views on Afghanistan.

"We're not going to win this war," said Carleton-Smith, according to  
The Sunday Times of London on September 28. Carleton-Smith, commander  
of an air assault brigade, has completed two tours in Afghanistan. He  
suggested that foreign troops would and should leave Afghanistan  
without having defeated the insurgency. "We may leave with there still  
being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency," he said.

Like Cowper-Coles, Carleton-Smith suggested that the real problem for  
the coalition was not military but political. "This struggle is more  
down to the credibility of the Afghan government than the threat from  
the Taliban," he said.

When Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as British prime minister in  
June 2007, British officials concluded that the Taliban were too  
deeply rooted to be defeated militarily, according to a report in The  
Guardian last October. The Brown government decided to pursue a  
strategy of courting "moderate" Taliban leaders and fighters who were  
believed to be motivated more by tribal obligation than jihadi ideology.

That idea was in line with US strategy. Now, however, both Karzai and  
the British have moved beyond that to a policy of negotiating directly  
and officially with the Taliban. For the British it appears to be part  
of an exit strategy that is not shared by Washington.

Defense Secretary Gates responded to Carleton-Smith's remarks Tuesday  
by reiterating the official US view that additional forces are needed  
in Afghanistan and implying that the British's officer's views are  
"defeatist". Gates said there "certainly is no reason to be defeatist  
or to underestimate the opportunity to be successful in the long run".

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist  
specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of  
his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road  
to War in Vietnam,was published in 2006.

Inter Press Service