 Welcome to this talk about the Taliban and negotiations. This is a critical paper. My name is Ben Conable. I am with the RAND Corporation. I'd like to thank the New America Foundation and the ICSR research team sitting off to my right here for inviting me to take part in what I think is a very important event. I personally am not an expert on Afghanistan, but I've been leading a research team examining the Afghan peace and reconciliation program for the past several years, and I've done some work on a regular warfare, so I hope to contribute a little bit to the discussion in the Q&A session after they get a chance to have their say here. The timing of this report, I think, could not be more fortuitous. So at the risk of becoming a Rory Stewart soundbite at the TED Talk, this is a critical year for Afghanistan. You've probably heard that at least 11 times or 12 times before. But I think it was probably true every single time. The negotiations are now an intrinsic part of the NATO strategy to draw down in Afghanistan to bring the war there, if not to a close, at least to a politically acceptable low boil. Talking to the Taliban compliments and also advances arguments that were made by Ambassador Mitchell Reese in his book Negotiating with Evil. If you haven't read it, I recommend it. And I think Mitchell sent a message saying that he concurred with the findings of the report. I can't speak for him, though. Like Reese, the authors of Talking with the Taliban, Talking to the Taliban questioned many of the basic assumptions that have undergirded the coalition approach to negotiations since 9-11 and probably before that as well. This report provides what I believe to be the most complete and updated history of negotiations with the Taliban and it also delivers objective and compelling analysis. And I found it particularly helpful that they wove the analysis through the document. So it made it an interesting read. Most importantly, it addresses critical questions about negotiations in general as negotiations apply to a regular warfare negotiating with insurgents and then also about the end game for the coalition in Afghanistan. I picked up three threads that I thought were really interesting. One, is there an inherent or intrinsic value in negotiation with insurgents? Or has Afghanistan given us good reason to question what I think has become a general assumption about negotiation? That there's just some good to talking with people? Reese also asks that question. How does the United States, a country that perhaps necessarily cannot speak with one voice, communicate a clear and firm negotiating position? So we have senators and congressmen and secretaries visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan, delivering different messages. It's very difficult for us to maintain a consistent, solid theme and negotiating position. How do you do that? How can any counterinsurgent negotiate with a multifaceted insurgency and how does a weak central government for the host nation in this case further complicate this effort? So we have three distinguished speakers. First, Ambassador Omar Samadoff on the far right here is the founder and president of Silk Road Consulting based in Virginia. He was a senior Afghan expert in residence with the Center of Conflict Management at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. from 2012 to 2013. Prior to this, he served as Afghanistan's ambassador to France and also as the ambassador to Canada. He was the spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul and the Director General Information and Media Divisions from 2001 to 2004. Professor Peter Newman, immediately to my right here, is a professor of security studies at the Department of War Studies, King's College, London. He serves as director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, ICSR, which he founded in early 2008. Newman has co-authored five books, including Old and New Terrorism and the Strategy of Terrorism with MLR Smith. He's also written extensively on Northern Ireland peace process and negotiations with terrorists. And then in the middle here is Ryan Evans. He's assistant director at the Center of the National Interest, a Ph.D. candidate at King's College, London, Department of War Studies. So we have a heavy King's College contingent up here, also in that program, and an associate fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence. From 2010 to 2011, Ryan worked the U.S. Army's Human Terrain Systems in Afghanistan, in Southern Afghanistan, where he was embedded as a social scientist. He's a fellow at the Inter-University Seminar on the Armed Forces and Society, and he's the editor-in-chief of War on the Rocks, which is a website that I think had its release today. Just today. Okay. A new web publication on war and foreign affairs launching in July of 2013. So without further ado, please. Hi. First, I just want to thank Peter Bergen and General Linn for organizing this event. And I also want to acknowledge our co-authors who are in London, so they couldn't be here. John Buu, Martin Frampton, and Marissa Porges. I'm not going to summarize the whole report, because it's very big, and I hope you'll all read it. But I am going to touch on a few key points and findings and conclusions. I'm also going to offer some policy prescriptions that are much more in my opinion than necessarily shared by my co-authors. Talking to the Taliban has always been a part of the conversation, but it became a really big part of the conversation in late 2010 and in 2011 when I feel like talks became the new counterinsurgency, that new cure-all that was going to deliver Afghanistan from all of its problems. But still, a couple years after, it became the sort of topic of conversation in D.C. on how to deal with Afghanistan. Still, talks have been a failure to date. And every time we get a glimmer of good news, it's always qualified a couple days later by saying that it fell apart, for example, that the Taliban were going to open an office in Qatar, and President Karzai objected to the sign they had outside of their headquarters, and he canceled the security cooperation negotiations over that issue. So what's interesting, I think this is a consequence of talks becoming a policy by osmosis rather than deliberation. Washington embraced the talks process in London due to failures on the battlefield, the shortcomings of the campaign, rather than the idea that talks were good on their own basis and talks would be something that could actually stabilize Afghanistan. And this lesson was reflected as well in the Soviet experience, which we deal with extensively in our report and we think has been referred to not often enough in Washington because we view ourselves as so different than we are, of course, in many ways, but that doesn't mean we don't have anything to learn from their campaign. There's been a lot of wishful thinking with the way talks have been approached and confused thinking. What do we really want out of talks? Are we trying to divide the movement? Are we trying to isolate the hawks from the doves? Are we trying to kill Mullah Omar or talk to Mullah Omar? What are we exactly trying to accomplish? And I'd also like to emphasize the bad timing. The timing for talks could not have been worse because we were not negotiating from a position of strength but rather a position of weakness because we were withdrawing troops before we announced that talks were a matter of U.S. policy. And doing so, we took away the biggest stick, the biggest leverage we had on the table as far as the Taliban were concerned, and that is our troop presence in Afghanistan. And I'd also like to touch on the issue of poor management. Within the U.S. government, you had DOD, National Security Council, other parts of the White House, the Department of State, parts of the Department of State, all pursuing this policy or not pursuing this policy for different reasons. And we called this the anarchy of good intentions. But that wasn't just limited to Washington. That also extends to our allies in NATO and in Saudi Arabia, all of whom have been trying to play a role in talks but not in a coordinated single-minded fashion towards the same goal. A lot has been made of this supposed moderate awakening in the Taliban, that there are these pragmatic and moderate people that we can deal with in the Taliban leadership. Not to say that that isn't the case, but the real game changer again is the departure of U.S. troops and NATO troops, not some sort of moderate awakening in the Taliban. And I think the ideas of moderation and pragmatism are confused and often referred to as the same thing, and in fact, that's a category mistake. There are two very different qualities that sometimes overlap, but pragmatism is not necessarily moderation. A willingness to talk does not mean that the Taliban have moderated over the years. And last, I'd like to talk about the localism of the conflict. We've approached talking to the Taliban as if the Taliban was this strictly controlled hierarchical movement that we can negotiate with some people at the top and the rest of the insurgency will just fall into line. But reflecting on my own experience in Afghanistan and I'm sure many people in the audience have been in Afghanistan have observed the same thing, and are fighting for very local reasons and are often only casually connected to the leadership or the hierarchy of the Taliban. So even if we were to strike a deal with the Taliban leadership or the Kabul government was, there's certainly no guarantee that that would hold and I think we only need to look back to the 90s at all the supposedly negotiated deals between different Mujahideen parties with the government and different commanders that fell apart within days or months to know that deals in Afghanistan are not necessarily deals. And so now I would just like to offer three policy suggestions for the U.S. And again, these are my own opinions and not necessarily my co-authors. I'm definitely the biggest pessimist on the writing team. The first is to step back. Washington, this cannot be a Washington-led process. One, it won't work if it's a Washington-led process and it hasn't worked so far. Two, we are leaving. Our biggest stick is being taken off the table. We don't have the leverage that we had before and we misuse that leverage when we had it. This needs to be an Afghan-led process. Now, Afghan-led is a phrase that's been used often in this campaign and what it's often meant in practice is you put an Afghan face in front of you but you're writing the strategy and the policy. This has to be a program that is led by Kabul and I think the roadmap offered by the High Peace Council last November, even though it's faltered, was a big step in the right direction when the High Peace Council went to Islamabad and laid out a five-step plan towards a peace settlement. But this isn't to say that we shouldn't be involved and in fact the most important, aside from supporting the Afghan National Security Forces with our dwindling resources in country, the most important thing we can do is to ensure that there is a stable transition when Karzai does actually step down when he's constitutionally mandated to next year and that there are free and fair elections held in Afghanistan next year and that there is a legitimate leader because Karzai himself is the biggest obstacle to talks. And I say this for a few reasons but most practically the Taliban will not negotiate with President Karzai. Just like the Mujahideen leaders saw Najibullah in the late 80s and early 90s, he's not someone that they feel they can do business with. They see him as a puppet, they see him as powerless, they see him as fundamentally corrupt and they are not willing nor can they be seen as their grass roots to be doing business with President Karzai. It is therefore for the purpose of talks and other issues in Afghanistan it is crucial that Karzai steps down as he is supposed to. And my third policy recommendation is to clear the chefs out of the kitchen. Last time I checked you had the U.S., Britain, Germany, Japan, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and probably more countries that I don't even know about all trying to get directly involved in some sort of talks process. There are too many chefs in the kitchen, they're working off the same recipe. This isn't to say that the international community doesn't have an important role to play, they absolutely do. But they need to be reading off the same recipe. They need to be coordinating and working together rather than working across purposes. There's lots of other important issues. Pakistan is something that I sure will discuss in the Q&A but for now I'll turn it over to my co-author, Peter Newman. Thank you very much. And I should say from the beginning that I'm not per se an expert on the Taliban or the Afghanistan. What I have contributed to this report is my expertise on studying similar situations in the past where governments were negotiating with groups that they'd previously considered insurgents or terrorists. In fact, in 2007 I published an article in Foreign Affairs that sums up some of these experiences. And what I've done for this report is to see how these lessons compare and what perhaps can be learned from previous experiences for what is currently going on in Doha. And first of all I should say that I'm not opposed in principle to negotiations with insurgents or terrorists. In fact, if you read my Foreign Affairs article what you'd conclude likely is that if anything I'm probably in favor of those negotiations in principle. What I'm not in favor, however, is talking for talking sick. In fact, what I've always argued is that if you talk to terrorists or insurgents there needs to be a reasonable chance for success. That is a negotiated agreement that leads to sustainable peace. And based on that premise and based on my analysis what I think is happening in Afghanistan right now I'm very skeptical that those negotiations will lead to success. And more than that I fear that the talks process itself will further destabilize an already fragile situation. Let me briefly tell you why I think that is the case and there's three main reasons. Number one, the kind of negotiations that have just been started typically take a lot more time than America has left in Afghanistan. I can't think of any recent example where such a process would have been completed successfully in a year. Whether you look at Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, East or currently Columbia, the Basque country these negotiations go on for years and they go on for years for reasons. Once you sit down there's a period in which you have to start to get to know each other, develop trust. There's a period in which you have confidence building measures, you have the actual negotiations and even when the negotiations in principle are finished each side takes time in order to be able to sell that deal to their constituency and only then you get people to sign on the dotted line. And even if you have that kind of process that doesn't account for setbacks, breakdowns, upsets. It also doesn't include the time it takes to implement the results of that negotiations process which arguably should be seen as part of the process itself. So even if you have the perfect process that doesn't involve any breakdowns or upsets it's hard to imagine how you can get this done in a year. It's never been done before. And so as far as timelines are concerned based on previous experiences I'd be astonished. I'd be very surprised if we had a sustainable agreement in the time frame that we have. But that's not my main objection. The main objection, the second reason why I'm skeptical is that the process doesn't include all relevant parties. It's negotiations so far between the Taliban and the US and they are both of course important and powerful players but they are not the only ones. Take the Northern Ireland peace process. If that is the model then one thing you have to recognize is that one of the keys to the success in Ireland was that everyone had to be on board. The Irish government, the British government, the Americans the big political parties on both sides, Protestant and Catholic and the violent actors of both sides the IRA and the lawless. Everyone was at the table and it was hard but when they signed the agreement after nearly 10 years of informal and formal negotiations in 1998 they knew that everyone was on board. It still took a long time to get it implemented but everyone who's been involved in those negotiations will tell you that it was key that everyone sign on to it. Just imagine, just imagine for a second that Secretary Kerry would stand up in front of the press announcing that he was going to open unilateral negotiations about Middle East peace with Hamas. What do you think the reaction would be? Do you think that President Abbas, do you think that Prime Minister Netanyahu would just stand on the side and say good luck, well done, we'll see what comes up? Of course they would. They would be strongly against it, they would condemn it and they'd probably do whatever they can to sabotage these talks. That is exactly of course what I do expect to happen and what to some extent has already happened in the case of Afghanistan. Now, I understand everyone's disappointed with the Karzai government. He's given everyone lots of reasons to be disappointed. He hasn't delivered on a lot of promises he has made but you can't just dismiss him and say that his government doesn't matter. The truth is that the assumption by everyone who thinks that these talks will work is that Karzai will somehow disappear, not play a role, just stand on the sidelines. Of course he will not do that. He may not be very good at delivering for his own people but he retains the capacity to sabotage these talks and that's a crucial element that this talks process is missing out on. He understands perfectly well that these talks, at least as far as the Taliban and Pakistan are concerned, are partly intended to humiliate him, to show how insignificant, how irrelevant he is and he knows that he wants to prevent that from happening. If you were Karzai, you would be doing exactly the same. The third reason I'm skeptical about these talks is something that Ryan already alluded to. We're pursuing these talks under the assumption that there's a movement called the Taliban that is unified, hierarchical, that the people we're talking to can actually deliver their movement. We're kind of assuming that the Taliban are like the IRA under jerry atoms but everyone who studied this conflict knows that the Taliban are not the IRA. For six or seven years, as our report shows, we've been looking for people within the movement that are moderate, that want to strike a deal and that can also deliver the movement or at least most of the movement. Yet they all either turn out to be not particularly influential, not particularly moderate or neither and that's to a great extent because of the kind of movement the Taliban are. Decentralized, driven often by local grievances, divided into numerous factions. I doubt anyone can deliver the Taliban. So yes, I'm skeptical. I don't think there's enough time. I don't think we've done enough to include potential spoilers and I don't think we have a negotiation partner who can necessarily deliver. Well, you may say, shouldn't we be trying anyway? What's the harm? Isn't it better than doing nothing? And to that my answer would be, I'm not sure. What we're seeing right now in Afghanistan is that those talks already have a destabilizing effect. There's all kinds of talk about a secret deal. People are arming in expectation of some kind of secret deal coming out. And furthermore, rather than promoting reconciliation as suggested by Ryan, these talks are offering the Taliban in Pakistan a shortcut and are precisely preventing the sort of process that we should be seeing. They used to say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I have no doubt that those talks that are currently taking place are well intended, at least from the American side. But good intentions do not always lead to good outcomes and that's why I'm skeptical that these talks will lead to success. Thank you very much. Glad to be here and I enjoyed very much the report. I think that it's refreshing to see a report and a study and analysis that offers a narrative that is different from what we have been used to in Washington, at least in other capitals over the last three, four years, calling for almost unconditional, unrestricted wish and desire and hope to talk to the Taliban. For many Afghans, this wishful thinking has a realistic side but also has a very unrealistic dimension. Afghans have known the Taliban since the mid-1990s, 94, 95 when they first emerged. So there is a history. You have covered part of negotiations that were held in the 1980s with the Soviets when the Soviets were trying to find a way out of Afghanistan and the biggest challenge facing that particular process was that there was no real Afghan voice. There was the Kabul regime, which didn't really represent many people and then you had Pakistan speaking on behalf of the rest of the Afghans. And so this is why the Geneva process of the 1980s led to failure basically and resulted in Afghanistan facing a series of calamities because there was a political vacuum that was created. And there was a political vacuum because no one allowed the Afghan people or representatives of the Afghan people and those who were at the time reflecting the Afghan will to be present and express it. And so this is why later on after 9-11, the first Bond Conference of 2001 tried to remedy that and tried to make sure that there were credible Afghan voices and that there was an international community to come together and to plan and design the next steps to create an Afghan government, an Afghan state, and so on and so forth. So there are lessons to be learned from the past, definitely. The Soviet experience being one. And then there are people who say, well, we should have brought the Taliban to the table back in Bond. My answer as a person who was in Bond at the time and I covered Bond for CNN and not covered by offered opinion and commentary to CNN, but I also had inside contacts and spent a lot of my time within the confines of the conference knew that there was no way whatsoever for those who think that the Taliban should have been brought at the table in Bond in 2001 to bring the Taliban to the table. Who do you bring first to the table? Mullah Omar got onto a motorcycle and rode off into the sunset and to this day we don't know where he is. To this day we don't even know if he's alive or not in reality. And he pronounces a few statements once or twice a year. We know it's not his statements. We know what his level of education is. It's prepared for him and he submits it to the media. So who do you talk, who are we supposed to talk to in 2001 in Bond? The runaway Taliban who were fleeing with al-Qaeda to Pakistan back to their sanctuaries? And what were we going to deal with them? They were representing a regime that did not have the approval of the Afghan people. It was imposed on the Afghan people. It faced a rebellion and it had brought foreigners into the country and set up terrorist camps to be used to attack others. So, I mean, were they a credible interlocutor to be brought in Bond? So there are lots of questions to those who think that that was the chance. That was the opportunity to solve the Afghan problem politically back in Bond. But that wasn't. Realistically speaking, that could never have happened. Other Afghans were not willing to sit down with Mullah Omar or his kind at any table. And to this day, 12 years later, they have difficulties accepting even a Taliban flag flying, let alone sitting and negotiating with him. So if we are going to be realistic about talks and negotiations, we have to be realistic as to, from an Afghan perspective again, as to who the Taliban represent. This is a big question. Who are they, first of all, in the Afghan sense? If you look at the nation as a state, in a country, in a people, who are the Taliban? Who do they represent? And where do they come from? And then the second question is, what kind of conflict is this? You know, you hear people who say this was a civil war. This, you know, after the Soviets left. When the Soviets were there, we all knew what kind of a conflict it was. All Afghans were together against the enemy. The international community joined the Afghans and fought the enemy. And we were successful. But then the Afghans were left alone. Left alone. But then our neighbors were still there. And our neighbors picked up the pieces. And Afghans were not given the opportunity to create their own political solution to the problem. So civil war, some people say, well, this is the continuation of an Afghan civil war. Well, if it is a civil war, we are talking about probably less than 1% fighting against 99%. What kind of a civil war is this? Because the Taliban, like anyone to come and prove to me that they represent 30%, 40%, 50% of the country, they do not. To this day, we claim that there are no more than 30,000 active fighters on the ground. And to this day, every poll and every survey done in Afghanistan shows that they have no more than 7% sympathy amongst the Afghan population. This can't be a civil war. Is it an ethnic war? For years, we are hearing from Islamabad that these are the Pashtuns who are dissatisfied. That the Taliban are the representatives of the Pashtun majority who are dissatisfied. They don't even understand or they don't want us to understand that there is no majority minority in Afghanistan. They are the largest group. But nobody represents more than 50% of Afghanistan. No ethnic group represents more than 50% of the population. And to the Afghans, there are signs of ethnicity, of course, involved in this. Because people gather around their ethnic group to defend themselves. But it has never been viewed as Pashtuns against others. Afghans have never looked at this as others against Pashtuns. And to this day, you have Pashtuns within the army. Mr. Karzai's government is 80% Pashtun today. So when you hear the statements coming out of Pakistan saying that there is a disenfranchised Pashtuns who have lost to the Northern Alliance made up of non-Pashtuns in Afghanistan. And you look at the composition of the government, and I'm saying this as a Pashtun myself, you look at the composition of the government and you see that 80% of today's highest posts in the government are held by Pashtuns. So how could it be disenfranchisement of Pashtuns in Afghanistan? Or is it disenfranchisement of that one small group? And so who are these small groups? What do they want? These are questions that have to be answered before we set at the table. We have to understand who we are talking about. The people in Afghanistan today are asking Mr. Karzai's government, who is the friend, who is the foe? You have not been able to define to this day who amongst the Taliban we can trust and who we cannot trust. Who is a friend who is fighting us, who could be a friend, and who isn't? To this day that hasn't been defined. So who are we going to talk to? Not knowing who we are facing. So this leads the Afghans to think that the Taliban are really not the issue. They are the proxy army that is fighting a larger strategic agenda for a larger purpose. And so if you look back at the history and if you talk to any Afghan Pashtun or non-Pashtun, they will point to the region and to our neighbors as being the main cause of the dilemma. They will point to the sanctuaries in Pakistan, to the support networks in Pakistan and beyond Pakistan. And I don't want to just finger Pakistan here and point Pakistan. It's a vast network. It's a vast network, unfortunately, whether you want it or not, that also has a belief system. A vast network that thinks that it's through radical Islam that they can impose their will. To them, it is a jihad. To the rest of the Afghans, it's not. So it's not civil war. It's not ethnic warfare. It's something different. And it's something bigger than that. And this is where the West has failed to understand this problem. And this is where the United States is looking. So political expediency comes into play. For the West, let's get out of here as soon as we can. But then what? Didn't this happen back in the 1990s when everybody left after the Soviets were defeated? And who failed the vacuum? Are we going to... Now, those elements are still there. Not only are they still there. They were powerful today than they were back in the 1990s. There is now something called the TTP added to it, with all its branches and all its arms. And so you're going to leave this region in the hands of whom? And so these are the questions that have to be answered before we enter talks. And before we define the parameters for talks. And before we design, we designate who should be our interlocutor. And I think that these are exactly the things that are being discussed today in Afghanistan. The Afghans are extremely worried and concerned. They're not worried about the fact that NATO is leaving. They're worried about the fact that the problem hasn't been resolved. They don't want NATO forces, U.S. forces on their land forever. They don't want you to lose your sons and daughters. They don't want all your billions of dollars at the end of the day that would amount to nothing. This huge investment that will amount to nothing if the vacuum is felt again by these forces. So this is why the political process in Afghanistan, as was alluded to, is so important. It's not just fighting the Taliban. It's not just seeking peace. It's also to make sure that there is an Afghan front, a legitimate Afghan side that can talk to the other side, so that the other side understands that the Afghan side, elected by the people of Afghanistan to the extent possible, as legitimately and incredibly as possible, has the strength and the strategy and the plan to enter into talks. Otherwise, I think that we're wasting everybody's time. We are entering a very dangerous scene post-2014. I will stop here and hopefully have discussions. Great. Well, I'm looking forward to some good questions. I would ask that you accept some ground rules before we begin the Q&A portion of the talk here. So the whole objective of us gathering here today is to obtain information and query and to query the people who did the research. So I am not one of those experts. I'm also here to learn, and I hope that you are as well. The best question is probably delivered in one sentence. I know that that can be a little difficult for some. I would ask that you keep it at most two to three sentences if you need a little bit of setup. Please be respectful of the folks that came here to give this presentation today, but we do look forward to hearing your thoughts, and also please feel free to challenge our speakers as well. So with that, we have questions. And I'm remiss not saying hello to David. I'll go in the front row here. Sir. Thanks. It's not morning. My name is Oqad Malik. I'm an assistant professor at National Defence University, Islamabad. I'm currently a senior fellow at Science, Johns Hopkins. And I'm Ali Zayd Durrani, originally from Helmand. So a nice mixture, born and brought up in England. And formerly, war studies at King's. So we're all here. I think my sentences are gone. So this umbrella organization, Nabilik, cloud of opposition against the United States, NATO, ISF, Afghan government. Nothing's been able to dislodge it for the last 12 years, really. The West is going predominantly. Money will most likely dry up. Why should they negotiate? There's no need. They fought it out for so long, they resisted. Whoever this may be, as you've made it out, why? There's no need at all. They may as well just continue. And that means it's going to fall into something else altogether. You're right. I mean, that is the fear that they don't have an incentive to negotiate. And that what we are hearing are just tactical moves to buy time until 2014 strikes, NATO leaves. And then whatever happens happens. Now, there are risks also with that calculation. Because on one hand, Afghans have come to a point where they realize that they need to defend the gains of the last 12 years. They feel that their security forces may have reached a certain level of competence in organization that would help them defend their gains and their territory. And that eventually there are other considerations that could help resolve this issue. Part of it has to do with India, Pakistan. But they're not totally sure. Nobody is sure. Nobody knows what might happen. And the Taliban don't really, you know, we don't, I don't particularly see any political will within what we call the Taliban leadership to enter into talks, genuinely. So the other options that they have are either to enter into the power structure, power sharing arrangement, which is something that we keep hearing about. But how does that happen? You know, power sharing with the Taliban is not an easy proposition when you have to defend the constitution in women and children and education and healthcare and so on and so forth. And free media and elections and a democracy. And they're against all of these things. The other theory put forth is you give them some territory, which is something that is nowadays has created a huge backlash in Afghanistan saying what are you trying to tell us that as an incentive we have to give them the Pashtun territories of Afghanistan? And then what? What will that create? Will it not create a Taliban? And how do you then deal with a Taliban? So these are issues that are currently very much on the minds of at least the Afghan political class and being discussed as we move towards elections. And the best case scenario is to say, okay, we come to an agreement with the Taliban whereby they enter the political fold and they come under the tent and they run for office. And we've been saying this to them all along. If you're an Afghan citizen and a few meet all the criteria, Mullah Omar can come and run and become a candidate and if he wins the vote, good for him. But they don't want to do that either. They have shown no inclination whatsoever to submit themselves to the ballot. Yeah, just three points. I can't see into the minds of Mullah Omar and the Qatashura and the Taliban commanders but I am fairly confident that they view negotiation as a continuation of warfare rather than something apart from warfare which is how we tend to view negotiation as something that's happening on the side that can solve the conflict whereas they view it as a part of their entire political and military campaign. The second issue and I'm really glad you brought up is the fight and this is something I alluded to in my remarks but just to go into a little more detail in Helmand, generally people we'd call the Taliban or insurgents are fighting due to land tenure conflicts and land usage conflicts that might not have anything to do with the government, they might. And this isn't just why people fight. This is why people in the South are participating in politics in the government and in the rebellion. The current situation is also very good for the opium trade. It's very profitable so there are criminal groups that have incentives to keep the conflict going and there's competition over the opium trade. And then there's rebellion against what is seen as a predatory government that seizes their land, steals things, abuses them, taxes them illegally. So how does a power sharing agreement solve any of these problems? How does constitutional reform reform of a piece of paper that nine out of ten people in Helmand, where in Helmand are you from by the way? Okay. I haven't been to that part of it but I mean what does this mean to people in Helmand? Constitutional reform, I would argue not very much. Elections, you know, going into entering the political fold. Najibullah instituted something called national reconciliation at the prodding of the Soviets. We even managed to use the same word as the Soviets, reconciliation. And this went to such lengths beyond what we're even willing to do. He would let anyone register a political party and compete in elections. He devolved power in the South and the East and all across the country down to the lowest level. We call them Informa Village Councils now. They, the name probably changed six times. At least the acronym has, I'm sure, since I've been there. But Najibullah went above and beyond in terms of political form than what we're even talking about. And none of it worked because the Mujahideen understand they didn't need to negotiate. And that's all I would say. I, you know, I'm not as pessimistic generally about power sharing arrangements. I also do not think that necessarily it is, you know, at the end of the story, both sides have issues or positions that they don't agree on or where they are fundamentally opposed to each other. I think in every conflict, in every peace process that I've looked at, that's how it started out. And at the beginning of the process, you looked at the position, you said, ooh, that will never work. It's like 180 degrees apart. And therefore you have to ask yourself, why do these people engage in negotiations in the first place? They do engage in negotiations because they think that the outcome of the negotiations is still better than what they are likely to expect if they continue with the status quo. And that is precisely the reason why the Taliban process is unlikely to succeed because ultimately there's no incentive for them to compromise their positions. I don't think that it's impossible for them or for any insurgent or terrorist movement to compromise their positions. It always happens. But there has to be an incentive for them to want to do that. Right now, as Ryan said, the one leverage that the West had, namely the continued presence there, is going to be gone. They can just sit tight and wait it out. There is no real reason why they should give way in those negotiations. And that's why I think they're constructed the wrong way. The key element that allows for compromise negotiations when you have those negotiations is missing from that process. I'm going to ask a follow-up question to Peter. Is there any history of a reconciliation process at the local, a reintegration process at the local level working in parallel with the reconciliation process at the top level? Has that ever worked before that you're aware of? I'm not aware of one, but I guess that if there's some sort of process in Colombia right now, I think that's what they would be trying to do, whether it's going to succeed, I don't know. But I think that's clearly the intention, even though the sort of bottom-up process started before the top-down process. But I think the intention is to have it both operating in parallel. Yeah. Okay. Please. James Kitfield from National Journal Magazine. Could you talk first two points? Compare, if you would, these negotiations to, for instance, Dayton or the Arab awakening in Iraq and give us why these are different and much less hopeful, seems to be your panel's basic conclusion. And also, if it gets to the question of, aren't they better than at least trying, we're not going to stay there as the Ambassador seems to imply would be the better thing to do. But we're not staying there. And we still are going to, I imagine, retain some influence with money, with special forces, with, I mean, I imagine that there is influence we can bring to bear even after the combat troops leave at the end of 2014. Why is that not enough to at least try to pursue talks and use that as leverage? Thank you. Did you have that end in anybody in particular here? Was that at Peter? Yeah, okay. I mean, two things that would come to mind here in response to the comparison to the, to the awakening movement in Iraq, I don't see that happening in Afghanistan right now. I don't, I don't see how there is a bottom-up, wide-scale bottom-up movement that would demand that kind of situation to come about. So I think that would be the obvious difference to Iraq. In the case of Bosnia, I think one often forgets, in the case of the Dayton Agreement, we always look at the Dayton Agreement as if somehow, suddenly, people turned up and there was an agreement. Of course, that was not the case. There were years of fruitless negotiations that went before. I don't know if you remember the Vance Plan or the Owen Plan, and it was very, very frustrating. It went on for years, and that goes back to my point about time scales. I think to get to the point of Dayton, there's a couple of three, four, five years left at least. And the second point is, of course, related to what I said before. In the case, Dayton succeeded because America decided to intervene and put a lot of pressure on the parties to come to an agreement. So there was an incentive for the fighting factions to some sort of compromise and to some sort of power sharing agreement. That sort of incentive is missing from this process. I think that's the key difference. Peace and compromise in Bosnia happened when America intervened. And here in Afghanistan, we have the exact opposite. America is withdrawing, so the pressure is off. Just to address, I'm not advocating, but none of the authors of the reporter advocating that we shouldn't be facilitating or engaging in some sort of talks process. I'm also not saying we won't have any influence left in Afghanistan after 2014. We definitely will, and that will be some leverage, but it won't be nearly on the same scale. As far as the comparisons to the Arab Awakening, the Sons of Iraq in Iraq, that comparison is one that was often made, particularly by Issa Spokesman, General Petraeus, General McChrystal, and they were, of course, taking their Iraq experience over to Afghanistan, but it had a few fundamental problems. One is Afghan society is far more fragmented than Iraqi society was at the time by 30 years of war. And the second and a related point is tribes in Afghanistan are just simply not structured the way tribes in Iraq have been, where we could go to a Sunni tribal leader, a tribal shake in Iraq and strike an agreement with him that he could reasonably deliver on with the people in his tribe, in his area, because the tribes there are more hierarchical. Whereas in Afghanistan, in the Pashtun south in particular, and certainly in the east, that's just not how tribes work. Tribes culturally exist more to preserve the autonomy of the family and the individual. And even to the extent that they were cohesive political elements, in my opinion at least, that has been completely undermined and fragmented by years and years of conflict. And so we've tried to replicate the success of the Sons of Iraq program through the village stability operations in the Afghan local police. And we've ceded these little militias all across the country. And these are elements further out into the rural areas that have chosen not to join the police, but they're joining these little local militias. And what I worry about is the pre-existing conflicts and tensions in Afghan society that are propelling people to fight to begin with, land conflicts, you know, rival Mujahideen affiliations and rivalries going back 30 years, by arming people that have chosen up until recently not to integrate with the government, giving them weapons and training and saying, great, well, it's time for us to leave. By the way, you're technically a part of the Afghan national police, now I'm sure that'll work out well. I think that'll make it a lot worse, actually. And I've called them many Civil War factories and something else that I've written. I just don't see how it helps the situation. But there definitely was a direct intellectual line between the Sons of Iraq program, the Arab Awakening, and this program. But I think it was one that completely misread both scenarios, in my opinion. Just want to add to the point made here that there is no question that the international community is leaving, the mission is ending as we have known it, and it's most probably going to take on a different form, much more diminished and smaller but more focused. So that is good news because that has to be anchored. That has to be an anchor for the future. That the Afghan people need to realize that the international community is still committed but in a different manner. That they're not going to be abandoned. That the Taliban and those who support the Taliban understand that, okay, this is not the end of the day and this is not going to change much, even though their calculations might change. And that the political process in Afghanistan, as I said, which is probably the most critical of all, advances. But advances in such a manner where the Afghan people are able to select a new leadership team and the new leadership team will have enough power base and enough popular support to be able to then put the country back on a more healthier path, not only for its own sake but also for the sake of international cooperation and the sake of regional relationships. And it's at that point that there is an opportunity for engaging at a certain point with the other side. But the other side may want to continue fighting and disrupting the process. But at least what you have is a much more, is a stronger, more cohesive Afghan government side, which could be a better partner to the international community and could strategically aim at moving towards a political dialogue. On the ombar piece, I'd recommend an article that was written, I think, in 2008 or 2009, by Carter Malkajian and I think his co-author was Jerry Myerle, Carter's now an advisor for General Darnford in Afghanistan. His article was on the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the title was something like, Why Iraq is not Afghanistan. That's probably more relevant now today than it was in any year past. I'll go to the back and then I'll come back up front. Sir. Thank you. My name is Nikolay, I'm from the Danish Embassy. I would like to hear from the panel your deliberation on the Soviet drawdown and leaving Afghanistan and the present one. It seems like there's both similarities and differences and I would like to hear where we are better off today and where we are doing the same mistakes. It seems like when the Soviet Union left, you had millions of refugees in Pakistan and internally in Afghanistan. You had water systems broken down. You had villages totally destroyed. You don't have that today of my knowledge. On the other hand, you saw Najibullah being able to stay in power even though until the Soviet Union collapsed and the funding dried out. A similar thing that could happen when we leave Afghanistan post-14. I would like to hear where we are better off today and where we are doing the same mistakes. Thank you. Ryan has written that. Yeah. I'll just comment briefly. We have a very long and in my opinion well-written section on the report on that. There are some really key differences and you're from the Danish Embassy, did you say? I worked with Danish troops. Had a great time. Best food in Helmand. So the biggest differences are, of course, is that the Soviet campaign was much more brutal. The estimates are not as authoritative or as accurate necessarily as I'd like them to be but the estimates go up to around 9% of Afghanistan's population, or 1 million people was killed in the 1980s. But it's also important to remember that many of them were killed by other Afghans. There were plenty of deaths in the tens of thousands, if not more, I wrote about this in an article before the Soviets even intervened militarily. But the campaign was more brutal. The Soviets never controlled key parts of the countryside to the same extent that we've been able to. We've also sent more troops. And invested more resources. We're operating with a much bigger coalition. But there's a lot of similarities. They only turned to talks once their efforts on the battlefield were not bearing the fruit that they expected. Their partners in talks were mainly the United States and Pakistan. They didn't try to negotiate, at least as a matter of national policy, directly with the Mujahideen parties until they were already on their way out. But that's another key similarity between the campaigns. Barack Obama, President Obama's gotten a lot of criticism, I think justifiably, for announcing the end of the search. It was a tough call to make. On one hand, you don't want to signal to the Afghanistan that this is an infinite commitment and they can take their time getting up on their feet in terms of the Afghan national security forces. But on the other hand, you don't want to signal to your enemies when you're withdrawing. They could just know that you're withdrawing and hold off until then. I think the President made the wrong decision and Gorbachev made a similar decision when before the Geneva Accords were even signed, he announced that there would be a front-loaded Soviet withdrawal if an agreement was reached. And this drove the negotiations team in Geneva crazy and they went on record saying that they thought it was a terrible decision. But once he gave that away, he had nothing else to give away. He announced that he would withdraw all of his troops. Now we don't plan to withdraw all of our troops. There will be a residual force. There will be at least 10,000, if not more, probably even up to 20,000, depending on the commitments that we can expect from our NATO partners. So these are different situations. Refugees have returned to Afghanistan rather than fled in the millions like they did during the Soviet war. But just because the Soviets were brutal doesn't mean there isn't much to learn from their experience. And I think there's actually a great deal and I'll recommend two books that came out within the last couple of years on that. One is by Kalinovsky. It's called The Long Goodbye, the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan. And the other is called Afghansi by a former British diplomat whose name eludes me at the moment. Both very valuable books, I think, for policymakers, scholars, anyone else to read that really wants to understand the Soviet withdrawal in more depth. And also the Wilson Center has posted all of the Politburo records from this period on their website in English translation. If I may just... In Afghan perspective on the two interventions, I mean the Soviet intervention is very different from the international U.S.-led intervention of 2001. That was seen as a brutal occupation of a sovereign nation which was denounced by the international community, the UN and everybody. This is a United Nations-sponsored and mandated mission has been renewed every year by the United Nations. So from the legal point of view, it's very different. Then how it impacted Afghanistan? I mean, you cannot compare what the Soviet occupation meant to the Afghan people, to the infrastructure, to the institutions. All the problems that we have inherited today are as a result of ten years of communist and Soviet occupation in domination, unfortunately. Third of the population left. Over the last 12 years, we have seen a return of at least four million back to the country. Rebuilding and reconstruction over the last 12 years is mind-boggling. Afghanistan has never seen this level of reconstruction in its history. So it's not that all the money has gone to waste or all the efforts have gone to waste. There is a good story to tell about everything. What has happened to women, and girls, and schools, and health, and technology, and media, it's all positive. So this is why it's so important to make sure that we do not start going backwards and in reverse again, and that we can maintain the momentum that has been built. It's just a question of putting the country back on the right track. And that's what the Afghan people want. Back during the Soviet occupation, you had 90% of the population against the occupation. Over the last 12 years, you've had 90% of the population with goodwill towards this particular intervention. Maybe afraid in some areas more than others because of the way operations have been carried out. But you still have overwhelming Afghan goodwill towards what the international community has done. I mean, that's a reality that cannot be ignored. Two very quick and related questions. First of all, this one is more specifically to Peter. It seems to me that the lack of cohesion within the Taliban is a major obstacle in the way of talks. I just wanted to ask you on the basis of your historical knowledge of negotiations how much of an anomaly that is and are there any useful precedents from history from which we could learn? And the related question which goes to the whole panel is would it be possible, given how little we know about the enemy to see the talks much more modestly as just an exercise of familiarization to see whether there's any scope on which we can talk or which we can perhaps found future negotiations rather than seeing them as a panacea which we could learn rightly unless you have very well done critiqued. Thank you. To answer your first question I cannot think of any movement in recent history that would have been described as equally you know equally diverse and equally ununified. If we talk about you know groups like I mean it's wrong to assume that all these groups that negotiations have taken place with in the past were completely unified and of course it was a major concern in a driving factor in a lot of peace process or it's always a driving factor in a lot of peace processes for the insurgent and terrorist groups that engage in them for them to be able to maintain cohesion within their movement. That is the single most important thing that drives terrorist or insurgent leaders because they know they're going to compromise on things that people have died for and that people very very strongly believe in they have to be able to sell it to their constituency in a way that prevents splinters from emerging. That was the driving force behind Jerry Adams negotiating posture that's why it took so long but a lot of including people like Tony Blair have said they completely understood that and they were able to tolerate that because for them the most important thing was that Jerry Adams could actually deliver the IRA rather than splinter organizations popping up all over the place. And when we talk for example about Hamas in the Middle East a lot of the writing about Hamas for example has been about different power centers is the power center with the Damascus now with the Gaza Strip and there has been a lot of talk about Hamas being not a unified organization but it can tell you Hamas is 10,000 times more unified than the Taliban. So if we're concerned about the lack of unity within Hamas we should be 10,000 times more concerned about the lack of unity within the Taliban because it's a much more splinter and disunited movement than any other group that has recently engaged in negotiations. So the second part of the question? I don't have any comments on that. You're refusing to answer David's question. David and I will talk for years later. I just want to add one thing. I think the Taliban have cohesion at the top and that has been maintained on purpose for one over the years who has shown to disregard for this sense of cohesion or has tried to undermine it has been eliminated or sidelined or disappeared or whatever. So whatever lack of cohesion exists among the Taliban is in the lower ranks and of course you have the Hakani dimension and you have the Pakistani Taliban dimension and Al Qaeda dimension and you have all these other jihadi types the Central Asians at the end of the day they all have their connectivity it's not like they're all separate from each other with no common world view unfortunately they do have a common world view but at the same time when it comes to the Afghan Taliban the leadership is thought to be the Kuwaita leadership has been able to direct and control to the extent that they can and whenever there has been dissension it has been cracked down on. I would disagree that there have been no recent insurgencies that are more fragmented I think the Iraq case you could go as far as not even to describe it as an insurgency there were at one point a hundred different groups that claimed to be operating inside of Iraq so imagine Ryan's statement earlier about the low level Taliban fighting for a variety of local reasons whether it's drugs or land disputes or tribal issues or some combination thereof each one of these little groups took a name each one of these groups decided to become the whatever front or the whatever coalition and they all had independent objectives, independent leaders, independent operations they were all loosely interconnected interwoven with each other they shifted allegiances freely in many cases again I'm not saying to draw a direct linkage there but I think that there are opportunities to study fragmented insurgencies that are maybe quite relevant anybody on this side of the room we've been going over this side quite heavily sir thank you so I think you know the big dimension that you didn't talk about is really the and that's really looking into the broader context and the reason that things are not getting resolved given that you know Mr. Ambassador you said that probably no more than 30,000 of the insurgency so there is obviously a steady stream that's basically kept at that level we're always reading about casualties happening on the insurgent side so I think there is a bigger and other dimension to this and you didn't talk about that you talked a little bit about the land part of it but those are really local disputes and I think those are easily addressed the local grievance has probably will be resolved because it would not take a lot of funding or money the bigger context this also goes to what happened to Najib Ula confirmed or unconfirmed reports basically that he was shot specifically because he was asked to sign in an agreement or basically an acknowledgement recognizing the current border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and I think if the DRN line if that's not looked into and addressed and resolved the issues are not going to go away and that's probably what it is in Afghanistan it's not really kind of in a position to compete population wise economically and educationally cannot compete with a much larger overpopulated country like Pakistan so you didn't talk about that part of it and so the question is if that issue is addressed really to pretty much somehow resolve that would that really stop the flow of insurgents into Afghanistan and probably allow for stability it is a it is a critical issue it is one that makes Afghans very nervous they see it as a historic issue dating back to British colonial times and the arbitrary drawing of a line in the middle of Pashtun territory dividing villages and families and clans and the history also shows that various Afghan governments over the years have tolerated it to the point where it sort of became mute at some juncture a mute issue and at times they've used it politically against their neighbor there is also nowadays a yearning to put this behind us and to find some type of formula to resolve it and I think that I did a survey last year through USIP of African political elites and I brought up this issue and majority of the political elites in the country said that they would rather have a referendum on it which shows their willingness to tackle this issue to a democratic means and resolve this historic matter and this solved our issue with Pakistan and whatever Pakistan is attempting to do in Afghanistan I don't know I don't know if the correlation is that strong I'm not sure that is one issue but if this supposed tomorrow the Durant Line issue is resolved will that be enough and sufficient to make the generals change their attitude towards Afghanistan I don't have an answer for that I don't know I'm very happy someone brought up the Pakistan issue it's obviously very important Pakistan has three long standing interests vis-a-vis Afghanistan one is blunting Pashtun nationalism which isn't a major issue now but it was a few decades ago when before the Soviet Afghan war there was actually a series of border clashes between Afghan forces and militias and Pakistani forces the second is maintaining strategic depth against India in the event of an attack by India they would have a place to fall back on essentially and also avoiding strategic encirclement by India which is why Islamabad views with no small amount of fear and skepticism increasing cooperation between the Afghan national security forces and the Indian intelligence services and Indian military Pakistan will pursue these interests whether they want them to or not and it's been interesting to watch American policy evolve towards Pakistan massive military aid massive civilian aid in the hopes that if we shower money on Pakistan we'll change the way that they view the world and that's just simply not the case and we increasingly hear this desire to stick it to Pakistan because in pursuit of these interests they've obviously been supporting these violent non-state groups all the way from the Mujahideen groups in the 90's all the way up into the Taliban and the Haqqani network now and there's the desire that when we withdraw we can finally stick it to Pakistan because we really hate these guys that's what some people say and I have a lot of personal resentment towards Pakistan having seen the fruits of their policies in Afghanistan a lot but I think we need to be careful for a couple reasons one is we still have to get out of Afghanistan we have a lot of rolling stock and equipment that will need to be driven out through Pakistan that's just a more practical matter the second is sticking it to Pakistan really change the situation or make it better and I would argue it doesn't do we want to encourage India to get closer to the Afghan government the Afghan national security forces I'm not sure we do I'm not saying we should try to keep them apart but by let's say encouraging them to make arm sales or take up the back in terms of training their security forces as we leave that validates the Pakistani narrative and really only encourages incentivizes the worst sort of behavior the most dangerous behavior that we see from Pakistan and from a U.S. perspective that's the perspective that I'm speaking from regional stability should be our biggest concern in that part of the world and in that sense keeping Pakistan stable should be as terrible of a ally or frenemy or partner whatever we're calling them this week as terrible as they are and Pakistan stability should be very important to us my name is Alexander Orleens I'm a student at Georgetown University my question is the subject of the IRA often comes up when discussing talks with the Taliban because of the similar specters that they raise in the public consciousness internationally but obviously there are very different places in terms of leadership, cohesion fatigue with violence and inclination towards politics my question is given the future that's expected very selfish U.S. presence posture of special forces and training forces will that happen for the Taliban will there be a fatigue, will there be an inclination towards politics and if so what will it look like or is it just a pipe dream and this is all tactical thank you I was going to take that for a grenade I think I've tried to convey this personal view that it's very difficult to think of the Taliban in IRA terms first of all in those who compare the situation to the Irish situation I think or misleading themselves in us but there isn't I don't want to sound like as though all the Taliban or fanatics and all or extremists who just want to continue fighting until they end up in heaven which is probably what most of them think and desire actually but there is an element within the Taliban that has over the years developed second thoughts about their role and what they want and how to best achieve their political objective but the question is to what extent is this group in charge are they the ones calling the shots and this is where most Afghans believe that if they do exist and most probably some do believe that there is a political solution to the issue that they they're not strong enough within the Taliban and that then this has become a tactic it's become part of a tactic to continue the warfare on one hand and talk about talks on the other hand it's just talking about talks but whether over time this particular grouping can have more influence is something that one has to look into and how can we help anyone help them expand this influence and be more recognized as well as more in charge is something that we have to look at over time I don't think it's going to happen tomorrow unless there is a coup within the Taliban which is unlikely unless there is a change of heart again within the circles that direct the Taliban strategy I'm glad you asked about the IRA I lived in Belfast I studied in Belfast I wrote my PhD thesis about British government strategy in the Northern Ireland conflict and Ryan told me to tone it down because it doesn't really matter to an American audience so I'm glad you asked that question I can unload now excellent so I really think the process is very very different and the IRA when it started becoming interested in talks in a very different place and even though it's become a bit of a cliche but really in order for talks to have some sort of chance of success you have to have what William Zartman called immutually hurting stalemate so you have to have a situation which all the main parties perceive that if they just carry on their situation will worsen and right now that's not the case in Afghanistan because the Taliban can just wait it out that was the case for the IRA in the late 1980s they thought they were losing support they thought that the campaign was not the violent campaign was not achieving any objectives it wasn't getting them anywhere and of course the British were tired of the expense of carrying on as it was so there was a perfect sort of situation to sit down at the table and talk about it and you do not have that situation in Afghanistan the second difference, key difference is what I alluded to in my talk which is that the perception of immutually hurting stalemate they then constructed an all-inclusive process that brought everyone to the table and that was carried out with an incredible amount of patience if you actually read the autobiographies of past British prime ministers like John Major or Tony Blair in America you may think that what they were most preoccupied with is the war in Iraq the war on terror, international issues but what both John Major and Tony Blair have written about in their autobiographies is that the single issue that has taken up most of their time throughout their time in office was the Northern Ireland conflict incredibly time consuming requiring huge commitment from the British government and from all the other parties involved and the idea that you can just pull this off in a year and then everyone is happy and Afghanistan will be peaceful if you talk to these people they would tell you it's impossible so it really differs from Northern Ireland in more than one respect and while we talk to the IRA let's talk to the Taliban it just doesn't work because the movements are different and the process was different I don't think there's an empirical study of Taliban leadership I think that would probably be very difficult to obtain we did interview a handful of active Taliban leaders and former Taliban leaders who did research for the Afghan peace and reintegration program there seems to be at least a generational division based on that limited anecdotal evidence and that the former Mujahideen Taliban are much more amenable to negotiations than the junior counterparts again this is anecdotal not empirical so there's certainly probably an age factor there where they're just they may just be tired of fighting they disagree with their younger counterparts who are more aggressive and apt to want to continue violence there may be a whole host of behavioral reasons there that we can't fathom but it would be interesting to identify factions within the Taliban perhaps and determine whether or not factions within the Taliban wanted to split off and join a political coalition this would be an interesting tactic on the part of either the government of Afghanistan or the NATO coalition I don't know if that's being attempted or not it might be more fruitful than this kind of holistic overarching approach to negotiate with the Taliban which we generally agree doesn't necessarily exist as the Taliban so I think you've raised a very important question do we have any other very important questions in the few minutes we have left again keeping the question short so right next to you my name is Jared Metzger I'm a student at the U.S. Press and also a student at Syce I have a couple quick questions from Ambassador Samad you made some interesting statements when you said that one that the Taliban is part of a vast network and I was wondering if you could elaborate on how vast that network is and you said that you couldn't only point to Pakistan so I'm wondering if there are any other states particularly you could point to or just other power brokers behind them I was hoping that you would miss that and I didn't also that there would be problems involved with giving the Taliban their own territory to control separate from Afghanistan and I was wondering if you could elaborate on what those problems what you would see those problems being okay thank you well I mean on the regional level we Afghans sometimes say we are the victim of our geography really we are not situated very well in the world and we live in the most dangerous probably neighborhood on earth and we have gone through two generations of warfare and it started out when I was 17 and I'm 52 now so it's been a long time and so for us we think that we've had a major issue with Pakistan unfortunately as much as and I know for a fact that the Afghan government over the last 12 years because I was involved in much of a lot of the discussions with the Pakistanis we've tried our best to convey a different model for relations with Pakistan and it seems that we have failed we have not been able to make any inroads and make any you know we have failed in trying to convince Pakistan to adopt a different posture with Iran our other important neighbor we have issues as well probably not as severe but could become severe with the potential to also be very problematic and the reasons are obvious number one is the western presence in Afghanistan number two we have over a million refugees who are sort of held hostage every time we relations are cool refugees are being pressured in Iran and there is a desire on the part of Iran and the Iranians are flirting with the Taliban nowadays which is very odd so we don't know what to make of this Afghans do not exactly know where this may lead the flirtation between Iran and certain groups within the Taliban what was the other question sorry the terror seeding territory to the Taliban now this is a this is totally this this means the breakup of Afghanistan and no Afghan whether you're Tajik Afghan or Hazara Afghan or Pashtun Afghan will accept or tolerate the breakup of this country you know there's a very strong sense of statehood and nation hood in Afghanistan you know it's not a new country it wasn't just born yesterday it has a very long history these people have left with each other and alongside each other for centuries and they're very proud of their history they're very proud of what they've accomplished during very difficult challenging periods and the latest one was the Soviet invasion it was the Afghan people together regardless of ethnicity that really came together and fought the Soviets others helped but it was the Afghans who paid the biggest price we lost as was mentioned more than a million people and it started again when most of us are still alive to remember that so this is wishful thinking and it's very impractical and it would not make anything easy in that region of the world it would make it much more difficult for anyone if Afghanistan was divided into two or three different even if it's de facto there are even problems with thinking about federalism in Afghanistan let alone you know a true sort of breakup of the country so I don't see that in the picture it would be much more problematic for Afghanistan and for the region overall Ryan Peter would you like to comment on that I think it's going to be the final question I think that was great all I would say is go to warontherocks.com sometime today just watch today shameless shameless plug it's not my last remark comments okay well it's been a pleasure to be part of such an intelligent and it might as a handsome panel of gentlemen thank you for your time and thanks for coming thank you