U.S. negotiators just announced a tentative peace deal with the Taliban. Does that mean the war is over?
On Monday, U.S. negotiators signaled that they had nearly finalized a long-sought agreement that is a step toward ending the American conflict with the Taliban. What does the deal contain? And does it really mean that the war in Afghanistan is over? Jen talks to Jarrett Blanc and Frances Brown about the long peace process ahead.
Read: Jarrett's Washington Post oped, "We Need to take the Best Deal We Can Get in Afghanistan"
Jen Psaki: 00:00 I'm Jen Psaki, welcome to the World Unpacked.
Jen Psaki: 00:08 On Monday U.S. negotiators signaled that they had nearly finalized a long-sought agreement that is a step toward ending the American conflict with the Taliban. What does the deal contain and does it really mean that the war in Afghanistan is over? To discuss this Uh, we have one of our regular guests here with us today, Jared blog back with us in the studio. Jared has held many important roles in the U.S. government. This is really for your mom, this shout out, (laughter) including as acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and he himself has negotiated with the Taliban. Welcome back, Jarrett.
Jarrett Blanc: 00:42 Thanks, and my mom wishes I did something else.
Jen Psaki: 00:44 I'm sure she does. Uh, and we also are pleased to be joined by Frances Brown. She worked in Afghanistan for the white house and USAID on and in Afghanistan, just to be specific. She's also an expert on political stabilization in Afghanistan. Frances, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us in the studio.
Frances Brown: 01:02 Great to be here. Thank you.
Jen Psaki: 01:03 So let's start off by talking about what the deal is, uh, what the deal is. Uh, so Jarrett, maybe you can start by setting the scene for us. Uh, how long have we been trying to negotiate an end the American involvement in Afghanistan. Feels like decades and forever.
Jarrett Blanc: 01:19 There have been on and off efforts to try to negotiate a conclusion almost since the very beginning in 2001. Uh, at the very beginning, it was really the Taliban reaching out and trying to come to some compromise solution, which we in Washington rejected. Um, over the course of the late Bush administration, there were some initial feelers from Washington, to see, could something be worked out. And then really throughout the Obama administration, we worked on this problem.
Jen Psaki: 01:44 So we've wanted this for a long time - bipartisan administrations have wanted this for a long time. What made it possible now?
Jarrett Blanc: 01:52 The most important thing that's happened now is a single concession that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special Envoy has made, and that is a concession about the sequence of negotiations. So there are really multiple conflicts underway in Afghanistan. There's the conflict between the U.S. and the Taliban. There's the underlying conflict between Afghans, a civil war that's been going on for really 40 years -- there are regional aspects to it. And throughout the Obama administration, we had this idea that the sequence had to be first the Taliban and the other Afghans would negotiate a conclusion to their civil war. And then we would come in and negotiate a conclusion to the U.S.-Taliban conflict. And there's a lot of appeal to that sequence. But bluntly, it didn't work. We couldn't get the Taliban to buy into it. And so finally, Ambassador Khalilzad has apparently persuaded the Trump administration to try the opposite: negotiate between the U.S. and the Taliban first and then segway into a Taliban-Afghan negotiation to end the civil war as well.
Jen Psaki: 02:52 So we're going to dive into kind of the multiple stages of this process in a little bit. But what does each side, if you're looking at the end goal, what does each side really want out of this Frances?
Frances Brown: 03:04 So what each side wants on this particular step is first from the U.S.'s standpoint -- the reason we were in Afghanistan to begin with was that it was a harbor of terrorist attacks that attacked us on 9/11. So the U.S. fundamentally has a national security concern in Afghanistan. It wants to make sure that Afghanistan is no longer a harbor for terrorist groups. It's still concerned about Al Qaeda, of course, there is also a concern that the Islamic state also has a branch now in Afghanistan. So the U.S. basically has a national security concern here. In addition, President Trump has signaled pretty clearly that he wants the U.S. to withdraw, that he wants the U.S. to be done with this as well. From the Taliban's standpoint, they essentially want the U.S. out, they want the us troops out and that's what they are bargaining for. They also want Afghanistan to be in Islamic Emirate rather than a Republic. So that's another topic that's being discussed.
Jen Psaki: 03:55 So it's important to note, It's, we've only really moved through the first stage here. Uh, so the deal hasn't officially been signed yet, or at least as of our recording this morning. Uh, and we haven't seen the final text, but based on what we know or what you've seen, what's in there Frances so far?
Frances Brown: 04:12 Yeah. So as Jared said, the, the U.S. negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been hashing out this deal. We haven't seen a draft publicly. He has spoken about it to Afghan television. So we're sort of basing what we know, uh, on that. Um, and we know that the U.S. leadership is reviewing, the Taliban leadership is reviewing and, uh, the Afghan government has seen a draft of this. What we know that's in there, according to Khalilzad, is that there's a phased drawdown of us troops. Um, currently there's roughly about 14,000 troops. A phased drawdown, reducing that by 5,000, over about half a year based on the condition that there's a decrease in violence in some of the areas of Afghanistan where there's big U.S. military or diplomatic installations. So that's what he's laid out. Um, he's also laid out that there needs to be an intra-Afghan dialogue next -- we'll talk about that more. And he's ultimately laid out that he wants counter-terrorism guarantees for the U.S. which we can talk about a little more.
Jen Psaki: 05:11 So part of this, I mean Frances touched on this, these counter-terrorism assurances, the certainty that the Taliban is not posing a threat. So what does that really mean? I mean, what threat do they pose now? What, how do you get that assurance or how do we know?
Jarrett Blanc: 05:29 This goes really to the, one of the core ironies in a way, of this war, which is that the Taliban have never been the international threat. The Afghan Taliban have not conducted acts of international terrorism. They conduct plenty of terrorism inside Afghanistan and they have harbored international terrorist groups, but they are not themselves international terrorists. So the question for many years has been, can we get the Taliban to stop harboring and protecting international terrorists and threatening us and our allies? And in a way, I think for the negotiators, this probably breaks down into three problems. One problem is, can you come up with a common definition of what an international terrorist is? A second question is, or second problem is, if the Taliban provides assurances, are they capable of living up to them? And I think the answer to this is probably sure. So long as you've got reasonable expectations. They, they're not going to do better than we have. We haven't done perfectly in Afghanistan, but they could probably do roughly as well as we have and at a much, much lower cost. And then the third problem is, okay, so they can do it, will they, can we trust them? And I think that the answer here is no, of course we can't trust them or anybody else, but maybe we can construct a deal which makes the incentives for their adherence so high that they're likely to follow through. They don't want to find out what happens if they don't adhere.
Jen Psaki: 06:52 And how do we track that? Maybe that's a strange question, but I think of how, you know, with other, with nuclear deals, for example, um, there's ways to verify that they're not developing... they're moving forward on the production of nuclear weapons. This is a little different cause they have the capacity to harbor terrorists, right? So how do we know they're not?
Jarrett Blanc: 07:13 That's right. And not only do they have the capacity, but there is, as I said, that you've gotta be a little realistic about their capacity to not harbor terrorists. Right. I mean there are parts of Afghanistan which are lightly governed at best. And so if there's some former Al-Qaida guy living there with his family, does that mean that the deal is off and the Taliban have failed? So I suspect that this is kind of a, a a a day to day problem where our intelligence community is going to have to track the specific threats that might emerge from Afghanistan and we'll have to watch and see whether the government of Afghanistan, either with or without the Taliban is sufficiently attacking those threats.
Jen Psaki: 07:53 Is this Jarrett, I mean you've negotiated with the Taliban before. It's been frustrating at times and no doubt is this the best deal we could have gotten at this point in time?
Jarrett Blanc: 08:02 Well without having the paper in front of me, I can't really evaluate precisely. But what I will say is this, um, the broad outlines that Frances has described sound about right to me. Uh, and unfortunately that's because U.S. leverage in Afghanistan has been declining over time. There is no question in my mind that we could have gotten a better deal five years ago, a better deal five years before that. And there's also no question in my mind that we would get a worse deal a year from now. And so I think if the, if the deal is about what, uh, ambassador Khalilzad said on Afghan television, uh, we're probably not going to do a lot better, as, as disappointing as that may be.
Jen Psaki: 08:44 So this is the first stage, as we've touched on a little bit, what's likely to happen next?
Jarrett Blanc: 08:49 Well, if you remove the overlay of that, the U.S. Taliban conflict, what you're left with really is this very, very long Afghan civil war. And as I see it, a few things could happen. One possibility is that the Afghans and the Taliban could negotiate a settlement to their civil war. I don't think that that's in any way out of the question. One of the things that the Taliban is agreeing to is to begin those negotiations. I think that the United States still has a substantial amount of leverage to help shape those negotiations toward a successful conclusion. Um, that's obviously the best case scenario. Uh, another possibility that we have to be prepared for is, is just a continuation of the civil war. I mean, civil wars often fail to reach a negotiated settlement. This civil war has repeatedly failed to reach a negotiated settlement. Um, the civil war could look like a few different things. It could look like a kind of a continuation of what we have right now with an organized set of, you know, government and pro Bonn constitution forces facing the Taliban. Or it could look like a return to the sort of Hobbsian war of all against all that we saw in the early 1990s. And then the last possibility is that one side might just win. Um, and certainly I think a lot of people's fear is that if the United States withdraws, there'll be like a psychological collapse on the part of the, uh, of, of the government and the Bonn forces that will open the doors of all the cities and the North and the West to the Taliban.
Jen Psaki: 10:18 And Frances, the U.S. has an important role here. So you've worked in many parts of the U.S. government for different presidents. Uh, what is the role of the Trump administration and how important is it, um, to watch how they implement or present deal?
Frances Brown: 10:34 Yeah, precisely. I think it's really essential the question of how the Trump administration executes this and then moves forward to the next step. And I think that'll go a long way in helping to shape, sort of, which of the three outcomes Jarrett laid out, which of those becomes most likely, um, the troop withdrawal in and of itself isn't all that important compared to the political signaling. How much the U.S. shows that it's willing to continue to use leverage to shape outcomes in Afghanistan. Remember we had over a hundred thousand troops in Afghanistan earlier. We didn't win militarily. So this distinction between withdrawing 5,000 troops or not, um, isn't what's going to make the difference. Instead, it's that the U.S. shows that it's still committed to shaping outcomes on the ground through economic assistance, security assistance, um, further political engagement. And I think there is a lot, there's a lot of questions that I'm still, um, watching on this. I could see a potential for president Trump to want to announce this deal and say, this signals the U.S. is washing his hand of Afghanistan. We're spiking the football, we're getting out. Um, and that that might provoke the sort of psychological collapse that Jarrett said, if the U.S. seems to be disengaged from here on out. Um, alternatively, if the U.S. signals that it's still, it's still with Afghanistan, it's still willing to go the course. Uh, as we negotiate this military drawdown, I think we still have leverage to shape outcomes.
Jen Psaki: 11:56 Yeah. And no doubt the challenge is that we're headed into an election year. And for any president, they'd love to be able to say, most presidents, that we are ending the war in Afghanistan finally. So that'll be interesting to watch.
Frances Brown: 12:10 Absolutely. And president Trump has been very clear about that. It's part of his agenda.
Jarrett Blanc: 12:13 Just to say that the reverse is also true, that if you have the final withdrawal a month before the U.S. election and it all falls apart in Kabul, that doesn't look good for the president's reelection. So I think for the Taliban looking at this and trying to assess how much leverage does the U.S. still have, are we fully committed to this withdrawal course? It's complicated.
Jen Psaki: 12:33 No doubt, no doubt. And it depends on how people in the U.S. hear things as well. When we come back, we'll talk about what a negotiated settlement might look like.
Music: 12:42 Pop music plays
Jen Psaki: 12:53 So one condition of the deal between the United States and the Taliban as we've talked about, uh, is that the talks start between the various parties in Afghanistan. The plan right now is that these talks will start in Oslo in the next couple of weeks. So first question, Frances, what is the aim of these talks and the next stage, and I think this is important because anyone who hears there's a deal, it's over. Afghanistan is done a, there's more stages and steps to this process. It gets more complicated.
Frances Brown: 13:22 Yeah, absolutely. So we've been talking about this first step that we're watching right now, but then the subsequent steps will be numerous. So what, what this conversation in Oslo will probably entail, this so-called intra-Afghan dialogue will probably entail, is looking to get some kind of roadmap or framework agreement for how, uh, the Afghans themselves will tackle the many thorny issues that they're going to need to have to decide to end this war. So in my mind, those issues fall into a few different buckets and they're all really complicated. So the first is kind of a political transition. What does that look like? Is there an interim government? What kind of political structure will happen, uh, as we bring the Afghan government and the Taliban, uh, into some kind of agreement? Uh, the next is the nature of the state. Is it still a Republic? Uh, what about the constitution that's currently in place? Is there, uh, an amendment to that? Uh, what's, what are the governing arrangements? The third big issue is what do you do about all these fighters, all these security forces on both sides who have been fighting for so long. What do you do about prisoners? Uh, the fourth is security guarantees. How do you monitor any ceasefire? We've talked about that a little bit. And then finally the, the last huge issue is, what about international economic assistance? Afghanistan has always been financially dependent on international help and are there guarantees for Afghanistan going forward? So these are really complicated issues. And I think, my guess is that any conversation Oslo would start to map out how those are going to be addressed and tackled.
Jen Psaki: 14:52 There's a lot there that they're going to have to focus on to state perhaps the obvious. So to date, the talks have been with the U.S. and the Taliban, which as you noted, Jarrett, is unique and different from how it was handled under the Obama administration. How, what do we know about who the parties are now and who may be representing them?
Jarrett Blanc: 15:10 Well, on the Taliban side, going into intra-Afghan talks, I think we know roughly it's the, it's the set of kind of Taliban diplomats who've been residing in Doha for years now who have spoken to the United States, who have spoken to other countries and who have started to have some informal contacts with other Afghans over the course of the last few months. The big question I think if these talks move to Oslo or elsewhere is what's the level of seniority that that Doha team will send. Most, most importantly, are they going to send to the head of the team Mullah Baradar, who was recently released from a Pakistani prison. On the, on the other Afghan side...
Jen Psaki: 15:48 And what does that mean? What signal does that send depending on the level of seniority?
Jarrett Blanc: 15:52 Well, uh, it's obviously a good sign if you've got a very senior team. I don't want to say that it's a catastrophic sign if you don't, as as Frances laid out, I think the, the high end hope or expectation here is um, that the, the first round of talks lays out a roadmap or a framework for how do you proceed. So you don't necessarily need the boss in the room for that conversation, but it would certainly indicate a degree of seriousness if they send their most senior representatives. Um, on the other Afghan side -- So, so you're going to have on the other side of the table, quite frankly, a more, well you can call it either fractured or pluralistic group. You've got you, you need to have representatives of the government and you also have representatives of the, the legitimate opposition, the loyal opposition, people who maybe are not part of the current government but are not taking arms against it. And coming up with a list of people who adequately represent that very, very pluralistic Afghan politics, do so at a sufficient level of seniority, and you know, is limited to some reasonable size -- 10, 15 people is going to be a challenge. And, uh, we'll have to see how the government of Afghanistan and the opposition try to work through that. We've, there have been lists of names floating around Kabul for the last few weeks. I'd say that the ones that I've seen have been a reasonable effort. Um, but nothing is final until it's final.
Jen Psaki: 17:14 And you know, there are, because there are different players who will be involved in different dynamics. Uh, can you tell us a little bit more about what you think these negotiators want? I mean, what's their, what are their end goals?
Jarrett Blanc: 17:27 Well, this, this is maybe the hardest part of starting the intra-Afghan negotiations, which is that I don't think either side really has a clear political agenda at this point of what they want to achieve. So on the Taliban side, they know what they want to get out of a U.S. negotiation. Frances laid it out perfectly. They want us to leave. Um, what do they want when they start sitting with the Afghans, what does it mean to have a Republic or an Emirate? What is, what sort of decentralization would be acceptable? What, what does, you know, what's the role of women? What are the protections that according to the Taliban, Sharia affords women, um, these are all very, very complicated questions that maybe some of the negotiators have personal views on. But as far as I can tell, the movement has not come to a consensus on. And on the other side, as I said, you know, you've got a very, very pluralistic Afghan politics that um, certainly doesn't have a view yet of what they want to accomplish in talking to the Taliban. At best, some of them might have the sort of unrealistic idea that, well this is just about cutting the Taliban into the existing structure of government. They need a few ministries, they need a few governorships. And I think that that's unrealistic given how strong militarily and politically the Taliban are.
Jen Psaki: 18:42 Frances, what, you've touched on some of these issues overall, but what will you be watching for as these talks proceed?
Frances Brown: 18:50 Yeah, I mean, as I watched these talks take off, I think one of the big issues that I'll be watching is what is going to happen with security forces. If when you think about it, this has been a long running war in which we've got the Afghan government and its international backers on one side and the Taliban movement on another. That's very simplified. Um, at the moment of any agreements, uh, even if it is as simple or simpler than we think it was likely to be -- Let's say there's a political agreement, there's a splitting up of ministries. Then suddenly you've got these two opposing security forces that are on the same side. What do you do with that? What do you do with the low level fighters? What do you do with the higher level officers? What is the command structure? Are these all, um, are the Taliban fighters integrated into the Afghan national army or perhaps the new Afghan territorial army? There's a lot of live questions there that I think are going to be very complicated. You also will need to demobilize a lot of these fighters because you no longer need as many. What do you do with all these guys suddenly out of work on the streets, um, potentially with guns. So there's, there's a lot of challenges there. We've seen these kinds of DDR efforts, demobilization, disarmament and reintegration efforts in Afghanistan several times before -- they never go well. So I think that's a big one to watch. The other thing on security is if there is a ceasefire that's part of this deal who is monitoring it? Most political deals usually need an outside guarantor force to enforce this, um, such an arrangement. And I think that's going to be a, a really big lift to put together as well. So definitely watching the security side. The other big one that I think Jarrett and I are both watching is, what do you do with the governance structures and the, the political arrangement going forward? Uh, is the constitution fundamentally rethought? Afghanistan is a very centralized system currently. Um, while it's a pretty decentralized country in practice, is there some space to change that up a little bit? These will all be incredibly contentious issues. So we'll be watching all of these. Um, and then finally, as part of this, the constitution itself guarantees human rights, guarantees women's rights. Um, clearly that's one where the Taliban is in a different place. So where, um, is the international community or the Afghan government, uh, going to hold the line on that? So these are all some of the really complicated issues.
Jen Psaki: 21:14 And we've talked mainly of course about, uh, parties in Afghanistan and the United States, but there are other regional party or regional countries and actors who have an interest here. Jarrett, who are the other international actors or Frances who have a stake here and, and what are their hopes, uh, for these talks?
Jarrett Blanc: 21:33 Well, uh, most importantly, you've got the neighboring countries. Every civil war is really a regional war. The, the parties to the civil war have supporters on the borders without whom, they probably couldn't survive. And so that means that at a very minimum, you're talking about Pakistan, Iran, and then the wider region of Russia, China, central Asia, uh, India. Any of those countries could decide that a deal between the Taliban and the United States is not in their interest, that a deal between the Taliban and the other Afghans is not in their interests and be a spoiler or any of them could decide that the threat of chaos in Afghanistan is so high that they're prepared to support even what from their perspective might be a suboptimal political outcome.
Jen Psaki: 22:17 After the break, we're going to talk about what might happen if the peace talks fail.
Music: 22:22 Pop music plays
Jen Psaki: 22:30 So Frances, obviously we're all rooting for the success of these talks, but I think everyone can agree there are a lot of thorny issues at play here. So what happens if the talks in Oslo fail? What are, what is the scenario on the ground look like then?
Frances Brown: 22:44 Yeah, so exactly. We where you really hope for success, but we also need to be realistic that peace talks are always really long processes and very halting processes.
Jen Psaki: 22:54 And by long it could be months, it could be years,
Frances Brown: 22:57 absolutely it, it quite likely would be years. When we think about all these issues to be worked through in the interim, we've also got just this month a scheduled Afghan presidential election, which is further going to complicate issues. Um, and then there's likely to be all kinds of roadblocks. So to my mind, it probably won't be a binary question of will it succeed tomorrow or will it fail? But instead sort of how are the road blocks addressed? Um, how does the U.S. and the international community try to be supportive and move it forward as we try to be supportive and move it forward, we do have a few tools. Uh, we could slow or halt our troop withdrawals if we don't think that, uh, the Taliban is holding up their end of the bargain of our initial deal that we discussed. We also have economic assistance as a leverage. Afghanistan has always been really dependent on foreign assistance in future Afghan state, whatever its arrangement will be heavily dependent on aid. So I think we do have some leverage to utilize, uh, and hopefully we can help influence a better outcome.
Jen Psaki: 23:58 And Jarrett, you've, you've touched on kind of some different scenarios. It's always hard to predict, but I think we can all agree these are challenging. There's lots of thorny issues here. What do you think the most likely scenario is at this point? Having been there, having sat at the table, knowing who these players are and let's talk a little bit more about what those, what the scenarios look like.
Jarrett Blanc: 24:18 Yeah. Well I guess what I would say is I think it's critically important that the United States and all of our international allies and partners be fully invested in trying to help the intra-Afghan negotiations succeed. Um, Frances has laid out some of the different ways in which we have leverage over those negotiations, um, for, she's also laid out some of the genuine international concerns ranging from counter-terrorism to preservation of human rights that we have as those talks get underway. Um, and it's complicated to use that leverage to be at the table and to figure out how to pressure one side or the other in order to get to the best possible deal. What's really tricky as a policy maker is that at the same time as you want to be fully invested in trying to get the talks to succeed, you have to recognize that most talks to end most civil wars fail. And so you've got to prepare yourself for the possibility. Even the likelihood that one of those other really terrible scenarios that I laid out at the beginning is quite likely to adhere. And as you prepare yourself for that, I think what you want to look for is really a couple of things. If you're the United States one, how do you support the Bonn order forces in Afghanistan in order to prevent either just an outright collapse which leads to a Taliban victory or um, a that return to kind of Hobbsian war of all against all, which is terrible for everybody in Afghanistan and a breeding ground for international terrorism. What kind of support, without having all these troops on the ground, can the United States and the international community still provide? And then under these circumstances where either there's a civil war or a a failure of our normal partners in Afghanistan, what are the counter terrorism tools the United States still has available, again, without all of these troops on the ground, in order to protect our core interests in the region? I think we do have tools, but they're obviously going to be very different from the principally military and kind of conventional military ones that we've used so far.
Jen Psaki: 26:19 Frances, Jarrett, thank you for joining us in the World Unpacked studio and I'm sure we'll, there'll be more to discuss on Afghanistan in the coming months.
Jarrett Blanc: 26:28 Thank you.
Frances Brown: 26:28 Thank you.
Jen Psaki: 26:33 Thanks for listening to the World Unpacked, which is produced by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. You can find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information and to subscribe, you can find us at worldunpacked.com don't forget to rate the show. It helps other people find us. Our audio engineer is Tim Martin and our executive producer is Lauren Dueck.