By Omar Sadr

Nonviolent resistance must mobilize the people and create synergies between different strata within the democratic constituency.

It is a dark age for Afghanistan. The reemergence of the Taliban twenty years after its initial defeat has brought back a totalitarian regime, leaving the country with an unsuccessful peace process, failed state, humanitarian catastrophe, the deprivation of rights, and an unprecedented rise in ethno-cultural injustice. Despite the twenty-seven years of lived experience with the Taliban, there are many misunderstandings about the group. It is important to note that the Taliban is not just like any other authoritarian government. It is neither a single-party system, a traditional monarchy, nor a military dictatorship. Instead, it is an absolute religio-tribal totalitarian regime.

Immediately after it seized Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban received a proactive, nonviolent pushback from women, civil servants, and human rights activists. I have described this elsewhere as steady, sporadic, and spontaneous. Another common pattern of passive, nonviolent resistance in Afghanistan has been the mass exodus of the country’s non-Taliban citizens, which first took place in 1996 during the Taliban’s initial period of rule. It is now happening again. During the last seven months of Taliban rule, millions have left the country, and many more will escape as the Taliban’s rule becomes harsher. But unlike in the 1990s, resistance to the Taliban has not remained limited to a passive exodus of the non-Taliban from Afghanistan.

A successful long-term, nonviolent movement, however, should neither be submissive, sporadic, nor spontaneous. Indeed, those carrying out nonviolent resistance to the Taliban should abandon a simplistic understanding of passive resistance and instead adopt political defiance as an approach.

To begin with, nonviolent resistance is not a call for obedience and passivity. It is constant activism, which requires the mobilization of the masses. Unlike passive, nonviolent action, nonviolent resistance is defiance, and it leaves no room for submission. This is what Robert Helvey called “political defiance.” Nonviolent action, therefore, will help discourage obedience to the Taliban.

Second, while nonviolent resistance entails noncooperation with the autocratic or totalitarian regime, the secular ideologues of the Taliban consistently suggest cooperating with the regime. Nonviolent resistance does not allow even the acceptance of the regime; it instead aims to overthrow and disintegrate it. Unlike political defiance, cooperation with a totalitarian regime like the Taliban creates obedience. Obedience in turn facilitates the sustainability of totalitarian rule, helping convert the citizens into submissive, atomized individuals who lose their self-confidence and do not dare protest. Historically—be it colonialism, apartheid, or racism—nonviolent resistance has aimed to overthrow the hegemonic and discursive order under these regimes. The same shall go for the nonviolent resistance against the Taliban regime. Beyond being organized, nonviolent resistance must present a plausible alternative to the ideology and institutional infrastructure of Talibanism. In other words, to borrow from Gramsci, it must produce and articulate counter-hegemonic discourse based on the cultural pluralism and rich history of the land.

Third, nonviolent resistance should now move beyond its initial stage of sporadic and spontaneous resistance. Instead, it should adopt a more strategic approach that addresses key questions such as the issues at stake with the Taliban, the effectiveness of various tools of nonviolent resistance, and whether and when to negotiate with the Taliban. Gene Sharp, a political scientist who had extensive influence over the nonviolent movements, has given a conscious warning to democrats on the prospects of negotiations with dictators. He argues that when the stakes of the issues are very high or there is a power asymmetry between the democrats and the dictators, negotiations can be a trap that the democrats must be cautious of. He argues that a “halt to resistance rarely brings reduced repression. … Resistance, not negotiations, is essential for change in conflicts where fundamental issues are at stake.” The issue at stake with the Taliban is both cultural and political. Hence, both the cultural and political forms of nonviolence are crucial. On the other hand, as the people of Afghanistan are suffering from the economic crisis, nonviolent economic actions—such as strikes, boycotts, and hunger strikes—may not be effective. Similarly, government strikes and boycotts of the civil service may not work, as the Taliban could easily replace protesters with its loyalists in the bureaucracy. With this in mind, the effective approach to resistance is the one that targets the weakness of the totalitarian regime and identifies the strengths of the people.

Fourth, the mandate of a political defiance movement does not end with disintegrating the totalitarian regime. Rather, the policy of political defiance shall be aimed at reestablishing a democratic order. This cannot be done by elevating the corrupt political elite to leadership or moving toward an elite-centric agenda. As a totalitarian regime directly assaults the autonomous institutions of the society, political defiance in Afghanistan must revive and establish civic institutions, which strengthen society to stand up against the regime. This will increase the capacity of people to resist the regime for longer.

Fifth, nonviolent resistance is a breath-taking exercise. While the aim is to reduce suffering, resistance itself has great costs. Fighting for liberation and the disintegration of a totalitarian state involves pain, suffering, and risks. However, resistance should avoid any form of hatred; nonviolence is fighting hatred without detestation. Hence, the ultimate end of nonviolence is not avoiding suffering but prohibiting hate, especially ethnic or racial hate. Therefore, nonviolent resistance against the Taliban cannot be sentimental, and any belittling or personal attacks cannot be allowed.

For Afghanistan, resistance in general, and nonviolent resistance in particular, should function as praxis to maintain fundamental freedoms, democratic aspirations, and the recognition of diversity in Afghanistan. It should not hesitate to articulate its ideas and struggle to convert them into norms. Simultaneously, the resistance must step forward to actively practice them. The political defiance of the last few months has had payoffs. Many pro-Taliban apologists have shifted their positions and now criticize the Taliban. This has been caused by consistent protests, both on the ground and on social media, which have increased the cost of supporting the Taliban.

Nonetheless, the Taliban and its secular ideologues present a complicated challenge. This challenge precludes any easy and ready-made solutions. Rather, it requires a strategic approach to mobilize the people and create synergies between different strata from within the democratic constituency.

Omar Sadr is a Research Scholar at the Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh.

Read at The National Interest

By Omar Sadr

Long-term security in an increasingly volatile region can only be achieved through joint security frameworks and regional cooperation communities. 

For a long time, Central Asia has been understood through the lenses of the “great game” and “great power politics.” With the shift in U.S. strategic interests from counterterrorism to great power competition, analysts believe that Central Asia will turn into a zone where the three major powers—the United States, China, and Russia—will find themselves with increasingly conflicting geopolitical interests. While all three are united today for a more stable Central Asia protected from radicalism, the divergence comes as each wants to supplant the others as a primary partner of the region.

Even after more than three decades of independence, the Central Asian states have had a hard time reducing their dependency on Russia. There have been shifts in certain areas—trade relations, for instance, with China gradually replacing Russia as a primary trading partner. In terms of security, as the recent Russian intervention in Kazakhstan showed, Russia has remained the region’s primary security guarantor. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which revealed Moscow’s military shortcomings, presents a new opportunity for Central Asian regionalism.

Lack of Regionalism from Within

Understandably, Central Asia adopted a multi-vector foreign policy. However, given the weakness of these countries compared to Russia and China, and the lack of a coordinated regional stance, they have been tied to the regional security architecture created by Moscow and Beijing. Three Central Asian countries—Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan—are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Similarly, except for Turkmenistan, the rest of the Central Asian states are members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Russia has obstructed any sort of initiative by Central Asian nations toward fostering regionalism. Instead, it has highlighted Russia-led and Russia-owned processes such as CSTO or CIS. For instance, Russian president Vladimir Putin once said that the threat emerging from Afghanistan “can only be overcome by a global effort with reliance on the United Nations and regional organizations—the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the CIS.” As a result, Central Asia could not move toward a form of regionalism from within.

The CSTO was created to defend member states against a conventional military invasion but it has remained irrelevant to Central Asian security. The Central Asian countries have disputes over resources and borders with each other, and, while some of them remained unresolved and have even led to state-level military confrontation, the CSTO has not presented solutions for them. Moreover, Russia’s lack of success in its war in Ukraine should make Central Asia think twice before relying on Moscow for security.

If there is any major external threat to the sovereignty of the small Central Asian states, it would be the competing desire of major powers in the region—Russia and China—to increase their leverage. Most Central Asian countries consider the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and have withheld cooperation with Moscow in the conflict. Unlike the Afghanistan occupation in the late 1970s, when Moscow was able to mobilize support from most of the Warsaw Pact countries, the CSTO members have refused to endorse Moscow’s stance in the current conflict. Given the presence of Russian speaking peoples in Central Asia and irredentist policy in Moscow, a Russian victory in Ukraine will present a real threat to these countries’ sovereignty.

The Need for Regionalism

On a practical note, as Jennifer Murtazashivili noted, with the withdrawal of Americans from Afghanistan and the bloody engagement of Russians in Ukraine, China may find “a greater incentive to become more involved in security matters in the region in ways they had not been in the past.” Without a clear collective vision, there is a risk that Central Asia will face strategic uncertainty or that it will gradually fall into the exclusive domain of one of the other great powers. As Russia has done in the past, China will dominate a less integrated Central Asia by dealing with each country separately. The region is also surrounded by a range of regional powers that follow an ideological policy, such as Turkey (Neo-Ottomanist ideals and pan-Turkism) or Iran (Shia centric policy).

An exclusive security dependency on the revisionist great powers is what the Central Asians should avoid. The shortcomings of Russian military power in Ukraine provide a new opportunity for Central Asians to rethink regionalism and collaboration to ensure a safe and free Central Asia. Regionalism as coordination will also prevent "divide and conquer" tactics by Russia and China.

A Path Towards Regionalism

Given the mentioned scenario, it is time for the Central Asians to take practical steps toward the formation of a security community. A security community, according to Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, is a group of states, a community, which has mutual trust and forms a collective identity.

In order to form a security community, the following steps are required:

First and foremost, it is important that the region develop a shared identity and values. Currently, there is a multiplicity of terms and jargon to identify the region. For instance, on the one hand, the term “central-Eurasia” is defined by the Russian orientation for which Russian right-wing intellectuals, such as Alexander Dugin, have been the main exponent. On the other hand, the term Greater Central Asia was coined by Frederick Starr to drag and draw the region as a cultural zone which cuts across the existing state boundaries. For instance, he considers China’s Xinjiang province, Russia’s Tatarstan, and the Northern part of the sub-continent as integral parts of the region. Practically, a narrowly defined Central Asia would include the five “stans.” Afghanistan is also a part of Central Asia but the Taliban-occupied Afghanistan is not conducive to regionalism.

The existence of a precipitating condition, such as a common threat, is the second requirement for the formation of a security community. To unify these countries towards the formation of a community, a common security threat would be great power rivalry in the region. Russia’s irredentist policy and the Islamic radicalism driven by groups like the Taliban, Daesh and other regional terrorist outfits are the other unifying factors.

The final requirement for the security community is the formation of an organization to function as a mechanism to foster interaction among the members. Thus, Central Asians should move forward and restore the idea of a Central Asian regional organization. This will allow interaction and social learning amongst all the countries. A multi-vector policy will be effective once the Central Asian countries are tied together in a self-generated regional organization. To better operationalize the multi-vector policy, Central Asians can adopt the omni-enmeshment approach followed by the Southeast Asian states. Elsewhere I have suggested the same policy for Afghanistan. While at the individual level, Southeast Asian countries have established multiple strategic partnerships, at the regional level they have also tied themselves to the great powers through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional forum (East Asia Summit), ASEAN Plus Three (APT) and dialogue partners. Central Asia could follow the same path. A Central Asian community “Plus Three” could include the three great powers, namely, the United States, Russia, and China. A Central Asian Regional Forum may include the mentioned countries plus three Caucuses states, as well as Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and India.

Such a framework will not only increase the cost of any potential external military intervention, but it will also allow Central Asia to build a united policy towards many issues including an increasing terrorist threat from Taliban-occupied Afghanistan.

U.S. Policy towards Central Asia

With the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is little chance the United States would engage Central Asia as a primary security partner through an exclusive strategic partnership. The United States also does not have a primary security or economic interest in the region. Every regional state’s desire to attract U.S. attention during the ongoing turmoil in Europe will not give fruit, much as it has not in the past.

The U.S. Strategy for Central Asia 2019-2025 outlines connectivity between five Central Asian countries and Afghanistan but ignores the critical need for regionalism. The Taliban regime is not only incapable of implementing regional connectivity projects but also increasingly creates a security challenge for Central Asia. Central Asia’s reliance on the Taliban to stabilize northern Afghanistan is wishful thinking. They underestimate the Taliban’s radicalism and their alliance with like-minded radical groups in the region. Central Asia’s connectivity with South Asia through Afghanistan could be materialized only in a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Till then, the Biden administration should encourage regionalism in Central Asia.

Currently, the Biden administration has framed the conflict in Ukraine as democracies versus autocracies. But this framing does not enable an alliance between Central Asians and the West. As autocracies, Central Asian autocrats will not ally with the United States if the framework remains Washington’s guiding principle. A better alternative would be the protection of a rule-based order versus anarchy.

A better integrated Central Asia can best deal with great power politics and growing instability from Afghanistan. The region can only overcome these challenges through fostering regionalism, collaborating and creating a security community.

Read at The National Interest

By Sayed Madadi

When Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad embarked on his mission in September 2018 to end the American military engagement in Afghanistan, few people placed much hope in his efforts. Almost three years later, even fewer people could believe the staggering failure of the peace process he spearheaded as the Taliban entered Kabul uncontested. There was a fundamentally flawed process design at the core of that failure which not only upended the opportunities for reaching a political settlement but also contributed to the disastrous unraveling of the republican government. Three aspects of that process design were particularly consequential: A two-stage process that reduced the republic of Afghanistan to a subsidiary party; Ghani’s backchannel contacts with the Taliban; a lack of mediators and a lack of institutional framework for civil society engagement in the peace process.

Two-stage process

Delinking the withdrawal of foreign forces from a political settlement disrupted the balance of leverages and incentives required for any meaningful negotiations to progress. The Taliban insurgency had two key demands, which were the withdrawal of international forces and a Sharia-based governance structure replacing the Islamic republican system. Those demands were interrelated as the post-2004 constitutional order was a direct byproduct of the US-led international military intervention. The Taliban wanted not only the foreign troops to leave, but to erase any sign and legacy of their presence in the country. That was the logic behind their insistence on negotiating directly with the United States instead of a more direct adversary, the Kabul-based government. For them, the country Afghanistan had metamorphosed into after they were ousted from power in 2001 neither had the legitimacy to exist nor the merit to be sustained.

In that context, a process in which the US negotiated its withdrawal and left the Taliban and the Republic of Afghanistan to hammer out the details of a shared political future was fundamentally flawed and destined to fail. That arrangement redacted the entire peace process to the US-Taliban talks and made the other component of the process secondary to, dependent on, and an extension of those negotiations. The negative implications of such a design became more obvious during the so-called “intra-Afghanistan talks.” The Taliban often reminded the Republic’s negotiating team that they were at the table only to fulfill their commitment to the Americans rather than out of a genuine will to work towards a comprehensive peace agreement. Even on the Republic’s side, many thought that the fate of the negotiations had already been decided between the US and the Taliban.
The American commitment to a complete pullout before and regardless of a political settlement effectively left the Taliban with maximum leverage but minimum interest. The Taliban believed that it had resolved all points of difference in its talks with the US and had no need to see the direct negotiations through. The agenda of direct talks with the republic made that clear. In the republic’s calculus, it had more than 7000 Taliban members in custody—even after the release of 5000 prisoners in August 2020. The government was also the only authority to initiate the process of delisting the Taliban members from the UN sanctions lists. The Taliban, on the other hand, had not even included those issues in their agenda. It instead considered prisoner release and delisting as American commitments, and preconditions for their presence at the intra-Afghanistan table rather than an outcome of it. That left the republican team empty-handed, unable to offer anything the Taliban wanted in return for a ceasefire, a concession of extreme value to the republican constituency.

The two-stage process did not just give away the republic’s leverage against the Taliban. It also undermined the government in the country’s domestic political scene. Once the US committed to a full withdrawal, the authority and legitimacy of the government were challenged by political factions long before the Taliban arrived on the outskirts of the capital. Building the much-needed political consensus became incredibly difficult for Ashraf Ghani Administration as political actors bandwagoned on the American appeasement of the Taliban, trying to negotiate their mini-deals with the insurgency to protect their wealth and interest. The President’s divisive politics and stubbornly autocratic management further complicated that task and weakened the republic’s position at the table. This was clearly at play within the negotiating team where the political standing of the members’ patrons vis-à-vis the presidential palace in Kabul steered their relationship with the team’s leadership loyal to President Ghani.

Ghani’s backchannel contacts with the Taliban

The intra-Afghanistan negotiations could not produce a political settlement because of the limitations of a linear, single-track, and static negotiation table that suffered from a high trust deficit and a structural ineptness to address it. Personal relationships between negotiators of the two sides were utilized only towards personal objectives because the rigid process design could not harness them for the benefit of the official talks. At least on the republican side, most hid their communication with the Taliban. On several occasions, members had come under harsh criticism from their teammates for meeting with the Taliban ‘without authorization.’ As external events and stakeholders continuously derailed the formal talks, the entire process came to a halt for weeks simply because one of the parties did not show up at a scheduled meeting.

The process also lacked credible and defined safety nets and backchannels to break deadlocks and salvage the talks when the two negotiating parties could not make headways. Multiple actors either tried to offer backchannels or were approached by the parties to do so. However, without their explicit incorporation into the process design, such attempts remained ad hoc and ineffective. In September 2019, months after the State Ministry for Peace was formed, a senior British diplomat conveyed General Nick Carter, British Chief of the Defense Staff’s interest in operating a backchannel with the Pakistani Chief of Army, General Qamar Bajwa. Although Carter remained involved in Afghanistan affairs through his relationships with Ghani and Bajwa, his efforts, disconnected from the official negotiation process, left no positive impact.

Unlike the Taliban who seemed to listen to their advisors, the republican side dismissed most analysis and advice. Instead, it was steered by President Ghani’s political interests and his chief negotiator’s intellectual capacity, none of whom proved capable enough for the complex task at hand. 

Later, there were efforts by the American, German and Qatari special envoys to function as backchannels between the negotiating parties. However, they were often considered untrustworthy and partisan by both or at least one of the sides—Ghani government thought of the U.S. and Qatar as too sympathetic to the Taliban. Instead, his chief negotiator was in contact with a group of businessmen from Afghanistan in the Gulf that he thought had credibility with and influence over the Taliban. That also did not materialize in any positive impact. The only potentially effective backchannel, according to its participants, was established by Abdul Salam Rahimi, Ghani’s special envoy for peace and deputy chief negotiator. Mediated by a Doha-based think-tanker who claimed to have built some trust with the Taliban, Rahimi leveraged his family’s political ties to the Haqqanis in initiating a side conversation. As early as May 2021, Rahimi tabled the idea of a “peaceful transfer of power,” something that became center stage in discussions immediately preceding the fall of Kabul. Of course, the departure of Ghani and the Taliban’s uncontested takeover made it impossible to gauge whether those conversations were actually successful in forging an agreement even if sub-optimal.

Lack of institutional role for civil society

The overly simplified process could not incorporate constant demands for inclusivity and representation. The direct impact of that inability was the dissatisfaction of many constituencies who felt left out, and unheard, their interests and gains compromised by the talks. This also hindered the public legitimacy and buy-in of the process. This deficiency uniquely undermined the republican team as the process came under constant criticism from civil society, minorities, veteran groups, and other vulnerable constituencies.

In the absence of multiple and broad-based platforms of engagement and debate, there was little space for the public to pressure the negotiating parties, especially the Taliban, to negotiate more seriously and discuss pressing issues that could near the process to an eventual outcome. The stagnated table in Doha was incapable of fostering broader dialogues away from the interest-driven and confrontational negotiations. Although the government tried to mobilize its constituency, without formal linkages to the actual track-I talks, those efforts failed to bear fruits. For example, the High Council for National Reconciliation sent teams to several provinces to engage with communities, and the State Ministry for Peace established a Civil Society Coordination Board and a Women Advisory Board. Additionally, some NGOs and donor-sponsored initiatives such as the EU-funded Afghanistan Mechanism for Inclusive Peace (AMIP) also tried, all to no avail as they lacked institutional linkage to the actual negotiations, to create bridges between the formal negotiations and a much broader and diverse constituency.

Negotiation without mediation

The fourth important design deficiency that considerably contributed to the process’ failure in producing a political settlement was the absence of a third-party mediator. Rarely have peace negotiations succeeded without an impartial mutual interlocutor bridging the distrust between the parties. With suspicions in Kabul around the mostly secretive US-Taliban negotiations, President Ghani and his inner circle struggled to minimize Ambassador Khalilzad’s role in the then-upcoming intra-Afghanistan talks. However, as the talks neared, Qatar emerged as a more plausible and interested mediator or at least a facilitator. But Ghani considered Qatar only a stretched arm of the US, especially as the Gulf state saw the Afghanistan peace process as a diplomatic lifeline amid the blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

While the Taliban’s rejection of mediation was understandable given their interest in stagnating and stalling the talks, the republican side’s opposition was confounding. With the clock on the American withdrawal ticking, it was obvious that prolonging the talks was hurting the Afghanistan government’s position. A mediator could have brought life-saving speed to the process. Many within the republican team seemed to have realized that since February 2021 and supported Qatar as a facilitator. However, despite constant nudging from the negotiators, Chief Negotiator Masoum Stanekzai refrained—as it only became clear in late June—from formally communicating the request to the Qatari government.

The other reason the lack of a third-party mediation contributed to the process’ failure was the dirt of technical capacity on both sides. Although the Taliban had much more strategic clarity about what they wanted from the talks and possessed better skills and in some ways even more experience in negotiations, their views of complex political and legal issues were very simplistic and rigid. The Taliban used their better negotiation techniques to push for those intransigent views, which made progress more difficult.

In the contact group meetings where the actual negotiation took place, it was obvious that the Taliban were coming with full preparation to counter the republic’s arguments. The republican side, on the other hand, lacked both the strategic clarity and negotiation techniques necessary to manage a process of such fragility and a conflict of such complexity. Strict hierarchy and political infighting disabled it from taking advantage of the available capacity in the negotiating team and the broader peace architecture. One example was their doubling down on religious reasoning against the Taliban’s insurgency and violence or in defense of democratic values, assuming that the Taliban would cease hostilities if they could provide one more irrefutable argument. They dismissed more nuanced arguments from politically less powerful voices who argued that it was falling into a trap where the Taliban forced their intellectual frameworks to drive the negotiations.

Unlike the Taliban who seemed to listen to their advisors, the republican side dismissed most analysis and advice. Instead, it was steered by President Ghani’s political interests and his chief negotiator’s intellectual capacity, none of whom proved capable enough for the complex task at hand. A credible third-party mediator could have helped the process progress by tabling creative ideas. It could also break gridlocks by applying iterative alternatives to conventional methods of negotiations. Equally important, a mediator could have kept the parties accountable against a timeline not necessarily driven by the US troops’ withdrawal.

The third important area where a mediator could have significantly contributed to the success of the process was in managing external stakeholders. The lack of international and regional consensus and the dismissal of allies’ views by the US incentivized many to try exerting influence directly to protect their interests. In addition to their ambassadors based in Kabul, many countries had their special envoys specifically tasked with engaging in the peace process. Such a crowded and chaotic scene took away the parties’ agency, especially of the republican side. The meetings in Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, Tashkent, and the Istanbul that eventually did not take place were examples of such an approach that derailed the process, took away the momentum and credibility from the Doha talks, and further undermined its prospects of success. A third-party mediator could have very well created centralized ownership of the process, channeled international engagements more constructively, and maintained focus in the negotiations.

Conclusion
It is hard to argue that had the process design addressed these three issues, it would have produced an outcome in the form of a comprehensive peace agreement. It is equally hard to discount the degree to which a flawed process design dimmed the prospects of a political settlement. Arguably, the poor design of the process also contributed to the disastrous and chaotic unravelling of the republican government in August 2021. The American decision to exclude the Afghanistan government from the withdrawal talks and commit to releasing the Taliban’s prisoners and removing sanctions took away from the republic the ‘fighting chance’ against the Taliban at the table and on the battlefield. Moreover, the absence of track-IIs and other support mechanisms further undermined representation and buy-in by minimizing public pressure on the negotiating parties. The absence of a credible backchannel also stagnated the talks in an environment of mistrust. Negotiations without a third-party mediator further prolonged the process and amplified the negative implications of the lack of technical capacity on both sides. Lacking a mediator, the process was constantly derailed by arbitrary and external deadlines and preferences. While the first shortcoming of the process design was uncorrectable from the beginning, the two other aspects could have easily been fixed at any point throughout the eleven months if there was political will. Although the process might have still failed even if the warnings about its simplicity and fragility were taken more seriously, it would have probably not collapsed the way it did and with the disastrous ramifications that it had.

Note: This essay was submitted as a discussion paper for a colloquium on “Why was a political settlement not achieved in Afghanistan?” convened on 15 – 16 July 2022, by the US Institute of Peace and the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies at the USIP headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Read at Negotiating Ideas