Should the USA and its Western allies talk to ‘moderate elements in the Taleban’?

President Obama’s musing about this publicly necessarily has various effects.

Above all, it rewards Afghanistan extremism and demoralises ‘normal’ people there who have been trying to build a normal life with our support. Why should they make the sacrifices needed to reject Islamist craziness if Washington does a U-turn for its own reasons and says ‘Hey, moderate craziness is OK’?

On the other hand, if the Obama idea is not to Win but to extricate US/Western forces from Afghanistan asap with some sort of flimsy ‘peace’ left behind, there may be no choice but to talk to the people most likely to cut a peace deal which lasts, unjust or otherwise, which tends to mean the people with the worst attitudes.

Which, after all, is how the Dayton deal for Bosnia was struck in 1995. 

Finally (and after heavy Western policy disarray getting there) Washington decided that a quick and dirty deal involving Milosevic was better than unending mayhem. After bombing the Bosnian Serbs to help the Bosniacs get a better territorial deal, the Americans duly rammed through a settlement involving Little Bosnia and Big Serbia and Big Croatia.

The author of that was Richard Holbrooke, now reincarnated as US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Are these policies by some chance related?

Cynicism aside, one advantage of talking to allegedly moderate Taleban is that this looks like (and is) a crude Divide and Rule plan.

All being well, and if rumours of secret discussions and other active disinformation ploys are pumped out by the CIA and MI6, it will lead to Taleban leaders wondering who is cheating whom in their own ranks – and which faction grabs the spoils once the conflict stops.

Hence they soon should get busy killing each other in a lively Pragmatists v Traitors bloodbath.

Change! Hope!