Complications in U.S.-Afghan Strategy (Dispatch)
Video Transcript:
Stratfor's Abe Selig explains how the May 20 NATO summit and the assassination of a Taliban official complicate the United States' goal of withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, Stratfor cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
There have been two recent developments that have a major bearing on U.S. strategy for Afghanistan. First, was an AP report leaking that U.S. and Pakistani officials have been engaged in intense negotiations to get Islamabad to reopen the NATO supply route. Second, was the unprecedented assassination of a former senior Taliban official with close ties to al Qaeda. Both these developments complicate the United States' goal of extracting itself from the decade long conflict.
The dispute between the United States and Pakistan over getting the supply line reopened is not as urgent an issue for the U.S. as it used to be. Over the past two years, the U.S. has made significant progress in reducing its dependency on Pakistan through the Northern Distribution Network. Pakistan is still the more cost-effective means of replenishing supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan, but the standoff over this issue now has far more to do with the core political disagreements between the U.S. and Pakistan over what a U.S. drawdown and post-US Afghanistan should look like than it has to do with logistics.
A key upcoming event in this regard is the May 20 NATO summit in Chicago. Participation in this critical meeting is in both the U.S. and Pakistani interests and both sides have expressed a desire that Pakistani leaders attend this meeting. That said NATO has made it clear that Islamabad cannot attend so long as it doesn't open the supply route.
The U.S. obviously wants to reopen the supply line to ease its operations in Afghanistan, and Pakistan needs to be seen as a primary negotiator on any summit involving a post-U.S. Afghanistan, hence the intensification of the back-channel talks to reach an agreement on opening the supply route. This will entail a great deal of bargaining on Pakistan's demands that the United States end unilateral UAV strikes in its tribal areas and agree to re-define their bilateral security relationship. A compromise of sorts is likely but not certain, after a key May 15 meeting of Pakistan's top civil and military stakeholders, in which a decision is expected to be unveiled.
While the United States and Pakistan sort out their mutual issues there is another critical piece of the American strategy for Afghanistan, which is the American-Taliban negotiations.
On May 13, we had another assassination designed to torpedo the talks. The target was a former senior Taliban leader, Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, who served as deputy education minister during the days of the Taliban regime. This is the first time that a former Taliban official has been assassinated and by elements from within the Taliban landscape.
Rahmani was one among a half a dozen or so senior former leaders within the Afghan jihadist movement who had joined the post-Taliban political process and have been engaged in mediating between their former organization and the Kabul government. What has been very telling is that none of these individuals were threatened by the insurgents over the past decade because the Afghan Taliban leadership saw them as useful channels for sending and receiving information to the outside world.
The assassination of Rahmani, however, has broken that trend and is a major indicator that Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar faces a serious challenge from within his rank and file who are very likely aligned with al-Qaeda and oppose the talks. Such a situation greatly compounds the U.S.-Taliban negotiations that have been marred by gridlock over disagreements on the status of the Taliban movement and U.S. forces moving forward. The assassination serves an important reminder; Even as the U.S. and Pakistan continue to struggle in trying to push forward negotiations on a post-U.S. Afghanistan, there are a number of third party spoilers that are actively working to undermine the already troubled negotiation process.
