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Understanding Taleban is key to peace in Afghanistan

The Taleban is not a fixed movement; it is in constant flux, both culturally and ideologically.

An attack last week on a hospital in Kabul was one of the largest acts of violence claimed by Daesh within Afghanistan. The group's emergence in the country has threatened to pull focus from international talks with the Taleban that seek an end to spiraling instability. Yet Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar says that the Daesh-claimed attacks only increase the impetus for negotiating a solution with the Taleban, with the latter group continuing to determine the trajectory of Afghan extremism.
A United Nations report found that civilian casualties in the country's conflict reached a new high point last year. As of November 2016, the Taleban controlled or influenced 10 per cent of Afghanistan's districts, with a total population of 2.5 million. The government controlled or influenced 57 per cent of these districts, while the remainder were contested. Those numbers may appear dire, but it is not all bad news. While the Taleban's territory increased, the size of the population within decreased from 2.9 to 2.5 million. The group also made several attempts at conquering a provincial capital in 2016, without success.
Without some form of intervention, the conflict between the Afghan government and the Taleban will most likely continue as a stalemate. In the long term, this will still be an untenable situation, as it will hamper reconstruction efforts and cause further suffering for Afghanis. It will also likely see Daesh and other extremists increase their local footprints. The prospect of peace negotiations has thus been brought up on a regular basis. These efforts will likely intensify in the years ahead, particularly as large regional powers such as China and Russia increase their interest in playing a more active role.
The talks are a contentious issue, however, not least within Afghanistan itself. Western engagement, meanwhile, remains characterised by a lack of knowledge about the nature of the Taleban and what it stands for. It is thus timely to take a step back and review some of the most common misconceptions about the Taleban. This article does not propose a solution to the conflict, nor does it take a stance on who the main international actors in a future peace process should be. Separating myth from fact will be a useful first step toward formulating sound policy decisions for any party taking up the challenge.
Myth One: The Taleban only uses negotiation as deception
One of the common arguments against negotiating with the Taleban is that the group is not sincere in its negotiation efforts. In the 1990s, United States diplomats negotiating for the expulsion of Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan were frustrated by what they viewed as the Taleban's constant play for more time. The Taleban's continued rejection of peace talks in recent years suggests the group still negotiates to extract concessions, without giving up anything of substance. Yet researchers on Afghanistan, such as Michael Semple, have also found the group may be willing to conduct meaningful negotiations when it suits it. The regime's negotiations with the UN on humanitarian access in the 1990s is one example. Starting in 2007, the Taleban leadership-including Mullah Omar himself-also initiated contact with Norwegian diplomats in order to facilitate talks with the Afghan government.
Policymakers have also often claimed that those Taleban delegates in contact with foreigners do not have any real decision-making power. This may have been true for some of the negotiations that took part in the 1990s over the fate of bin Laden, when the Taleban's chief negotiator at the time, Foreign Minister Mullah Muttawakil, was gradually being marginalised by the leadership in Kandahar. It no longer appears to be the case, however. It is notable that Taleban officials currently manning the group's representative office in Doha, Qatar, have authority to negotiate on behalf of its leadership. These individuals were able to secure the release of five Taleban members from the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in 2014, in exchange for American captive Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.
Myth Two: Taleban ideology is inflexible and anti-democratic
Another common misconception is that negotiating with the Taleban would reverse all progress made in Afghanistan since 2001, whether in the fields of human rights, women's equality, health, education, or democracy. Proponents of this view see the Taleban as a monolithic actor whose ideology is inherently inflexible and anti-democratic.
The Taleban is not a fixed movement; it is in constant flux, both culturally and ideologically. This means there is a plethora of opinion regarding the ideal form of peace negotiations and the future Afghan state, amply described in a 2016 report by the Center on International Cooperation. Taleban officials interviewed in the paper claimed that "the Taleban leadership does not seek a political monopoly, and. it recognises the importance of sharing power with other Afghan factions." The main obstacle to peace is not the Taleban's unwillingness to share power, but the presence of foreign troops in the country.
The Taleban has in fact been an under-studied movement for many years-not least because of the security situation in Afghanistan, and also due to language and cultural barriers, which has discouraged research based on indigenous sources. As a result, we are only now starting to understand the regime of the 1990s and have a long way to go to catch up to 2016.
Some recent research that has been conducted, including by Alex Strick Van Linschoten at King's College London, has found that the group draws its identity from a deep religious, cultural, and institutional heritage, including even a rich collection of songs and poetry. The political system it introduced in the 1990s was not a new and alien system based on religious dogma; rather it was a continuation of a political system dating back to the early 20^th century. The group certainly introduced new elements, such as the rise of a clerical class in positions of power, but it left more unchanged than is commonly perceived. It might thus be convinced to do the same with regard to changes made in recent years.
Myth Three: Taleban members are either moderates or hardliners
The third and final myth is that the Taleban can be neatly divided into two camps: politically pragmatic moderates willing to negotiate and uncompromising hardliners who must be fought militarily. While there are certainly groups within the Taleban that fit these characteristics, the majority of its members are not so easily characterised.
Based on my own fieldwork, there is a spectrum of opinion at all levels of the group, between those who would unconditionally lay down their weapons and join the government and those who believe armed struggle framed as jihad is an end in itself. As noted in the report by Kings College's Van Linschoten, there are no fixed components in the Taleban: "sections are shifting and formed and reformed, with alliances easily switched."
The group's large middle category consists of those who want Afghanistan to be an Islamic state but are willing to negotiate on the best means to establish it, including gradual and non-violent means, as well as how it should ultimately look, which might eventually include acceptance of a form of political pluralism. This category also includes those who are not particularly religious, but who fight due to common grievances such as unemployment, political oppression, and tribal affiliations.
The corollary of this is that any attempt to pitch Taleban moderates against hardliners would not capture the large middle category, and render any peace negotiations unrepresentative and ineffective. It might ultimately also push more people toward the hardline camp, which is arguably what happened in the 1990s.
What next?
It is widely agreed that there is no military solution to the Afghan conflict. The US has long sought quick fixes such as more troops or exerting more diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to manage the problem. These measures may weaken the Taleban in the short term, but they won't lead to long-term peace. Increasing pressure on Islamabad, for example, may simply see it seek allies elsewhere in the region - Pakistan is already one of the closest partners of China. Given this, the most likely scenario for the year ahead is that of a continued stalemate, with neither the government nor the Taleban strong enough to tip the power balance completely in its favour.
As more regional powers engage in Afghanistan it is likely that negotiations will be higher on the agenda in 2017 and the years that follow. Despite the inherent difficulties, talking directly with the Taleban remains the most viable long-term solution for peace. A successful approach will depend on all parties separating myth from reality in dealing with the Taleban.
Anne Stenersen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, where she manages the Terrorism Research Project. The article was originally published in The Global Observatory.