Why Direct Negotiations Between Afghanistan and Pakistan are Needed for Peace

Author and former Pentagon staffer Sarah Chayes tells host Lisa Mullins that bringing peace to Afghanistan will require direct negotiations between Kabul and Islamabad.

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Lisa Mullins: I am Lisa Mullins and this is The World, the co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. A top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan had tough words for Pakistan today. Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti said the Pakistan troops simply look the other way when insurgents fire rockets from Pakistan against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He also said the cross-border communications with the Pakistanis remained difficult or non-existent. For some time now, U.S. officials have been charging Pakistan with aiding the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan. Sarah Chayes served as a special assistant to Admiral Mike Mullen. Admiral Mullen recently stepped down as Chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Chayes says that efforts to broker peace in Afghanistan through negotiations with the Taliban are misguided. She says that’s because the Taliban are essentially a proxy force of Pakistan and its military intelligence agency.

Sarah Chayes: When we talk about insurgencies and via negotiations, the presumption in that kind of statement is that you’re talking to a genuinely indigenous group or force. Whereas, the leadership of the Taliban and Haqqani network are essentially proxies of the Pakistani Military Intelligence Agency. So, what you are going to arrive at by negotiating in this route – and this is exactly what the Military Intelligence Agency wants – is for them to determine the outcome of these negotiations.

Mullins: But also, do we even know what Afghanistan wants?

Chayes: There is such an effort to try to accommodate Pakistan, and how can we get Pakistan on board with the peace process, that we are forgetting that most Afghans do not want to be back under the heel of Pakistan. And a lot of those Afghans are busily re-arming and re-positioning themselves to fight against this. So, if you bend over too far backwards to accommodate Pakistan in some kind of a negotiated settlement, you are going to get civil war.

Mullins: Yes, but at the same time, how can you deal with the Taliban or anti-American forces in Afghanistan and not deal with the ISI and the Pakistani government? I mean, it’s really a duel tracks.

Chayes: It is. Yes, a dual track is how I would do it. I would say, “Look, negotiating with the Taliban in this context is really negotiating with the ISI by proxies.

Mullins: This is the Intelligence Service in Pakistan.

Chayes: That’s right, the Military Intelligence Service. Negotiating with Taliban or Haqqani leadership is in effect negotiating with Pakistani leadership by proxies. So let’s do it directly. Let’s have state-to-state negotiations between Kabul and Islamabad that would be facilitated either by a U.S. facilitator or another international kind of “babysitter” and let’s really lay out on the table what is it that Pakistan wants out of Afghanistan. And instead of them going through this tortuous, indirect route to obtain what they want, let’s get it out on the table. What can they reasonably request or aspire to from their neighbor and what is actually unreasonable?

Mullins: Sarah, you have worked with some of the highest ranking U.S. officials at the U.S. military including General David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal. You’ve been working with them, helping to advise them about what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan, what’s going on with Pakistan. What do you see as the transformation of thinking, say over the past 10 years, both about the U.S. role in Afghanistan and the relationship with Pakistan and that “Af-Pak” as Richard Holbrooke called that link itself?

Chayes: In the early years I saw the military as being much more switched on about Pakistan’s role, particularly military officers that I encountered in the field who were watching it. They were watching in 2003, 2004, 2005.

Mullins: When you were in Afghanistan.

Chayes: Correct. I remember hearing an officer say, “If it were to invade Pakistan, I would sign up for another tour of duty tomorrow.” There was a great deal of frustration on the part of military officers on the ground who were watching the facilitating role that the Pakistani military was playing with the insurgency. As you move higher up in the ranks and you are not as exposed to that reality, it’s quite hard for people to believe that this is actually going on and you are hearing that Pakistan is an ally. I would say, on the side of the State Department even more so, that the State Department is kind of hardwired to interact positively with its counterparts. So, it’s very hard to ask State Department officials to think critically about their counterparts, particularly a country that is being described as a vital ally.

Mullins: Thank you Sarah Chayes.

Chayes: Thank you.

Mullins: Sarah Chayes is author of “The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.”

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