Boston Globe Editorial - Kabul's peace conference

Boston Globe Editorial - Kabul's peace conference
Copyright by The Boston Globe
Published: August 14, 2007


A four-day conference of some 600 Afghan and Pakistani tribal leaders that concluded Sunday in Kabul was a belated recognition that a more supple strategy is needed to defend Afghanistan against renewed assaults by the Taliban.

One breakthrough of the peace jirga was that it drew a rare public acknowledgment from President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan that Taliban militants have been using tribal areas inside Pakistan as safe havens from which to launch attacks into Afghanistan.

Welcome as it is, the admission can hardly make a difference unless Pakistan ends its policy of backing Taliban elements, which it considers a counterforce to Indian influence in the region. Such a change may now be possible, but only as part of a larger set of trade-offs that balance the vital interests of moderate forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A deal of this kind will require compromises that the jirga participants may be ready to make but that the Bush administration - with its propensity to frame complex issues as stark conflicts of good and evil - may not be prepared to accept.

Musharraf highlighted a key compromise when he spoke of isolating the die-hard militants among the Taliban and trying to "win the hearts and minds" of the Pashtun ethnic group from whom the Taliban draw their recruits.

Indeed, the jirga's closing statement said that 50 tribal leaders from both sides of the border would meet regularly to "expedite the ongoing process of dialogue for peace and reconciliation with the opposition." This was a tactful way of describing a strategy to co-opt those Taliban elements who can be won over.

As Musharraf hinted, this strategy presumes that pragmatic elements among the Taliban exist and are supported by a certain portion of the ethnic Pashtun who predominate in Afghanistan and adjacent tribal areas of Pakistan.

Left unsaid was the Pakistani belief that the Pashtun have been deprived of their proper share of power in Afghanistan ever since the Americans routed the Taliban in late 2001, with the help of the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance, which had been backed previously by India, Iran, and Russia.

For such a strategy to work, Musharraf will have to do his part. This does not mean halting all cross-border infiltration - an impossible task - but dismantling the Taliban's command structure. This is something Pakistan's military intelligence is capable of doing. Toward that end, Pakistan must be assured that a post-Taliban Afghanistan will not become a repository of Indian influence, will not deprive the Pashtun of their fair share of power, and will recognize the current border between the two countries.

And it would help if America and its allies generously financed reconstruction projects through the Karzai government and ceased air attacks that kill civilians.