Reconciliation won't cut it in Afghanistan

“War is not a festival,” the Taliban have said, but here in Kandahar City it is at least a paid week off. The 10th annual “spring offensive” began May 1st according to a Taliban statement warning Afghans to stay home to avoid the fireworks, and, as the clock struck midnight, the United Nations and many international aid groups locked up and checked out of Kandahar City, some going as far as Dubai. Meanwhile, vacation is over for the 475 Taliban prisoners sprung loose downtown last week: whether or not the “spring offensive” will bring as many road-side executions and political assassinations as the winter, it will surely bring the manpower.

“The city so nice, they named it twice” it may be, but 475 Taliban (including commanders) spawning smack dab in Kandahar City, Kandahar Province, is not what President Hamid Karzai had in mind when he launched the Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Program's “reintegration” campaign last June. Reintegration, or as an International Security Assistance Force how-to flyer puts it, “enabling local communities to welcome former insurgents back to Afghan society,” is a tough sell in a city where, despite being the epicenter of the hospitable Pashtunwali culture, a Westerner braving the streets would be lucky to be greeted with more than glares. The Pentagon's recent“Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” boasted 699 reintegrees throughout Afghanistan, but it is unlikely many of these hailed from the city where – contrary to an April Washington Post diagram showing “insurgent-controlled” ink spots surrounding Kandahar City in April '10 disappearing in April '11 – the Taliban are already at home.

As Sarah Chayes, an American writer in Kandahar City since 2001, once put it: “What is this culture that makes the Afghans, the famously bloodthirsty Afghans, welcome their mortal enemies into their midst, and show them courtesy?” Here, where word travels faster than Twitter, it is the intimidation. “I heard the son of Akhter is working with the Americans,” go the whispers. Last week the mayor reported that only 45 of the city's 125 municipality posts are filled, mostly because of Taliban death threats. Nearly ten years after the US Special Forces evicted Mullah Omar from his downtown mansion, fear of gossip and wandering eyes keeps Kandahar under the Taliban's spell.

This is not the place of roses described in last week's Pentagon report: Measuring since October 2010, “noticeable security gains are evident in Kandahar City and several critical surrounding districts,” the Pentagon assessed. Throughout the south, momentum is shifting “from the insurgency to the Afghan government and the coalition.” And, most importantly in COIN, “Afghan perceptions of security improved slightly.”

But the last is a spin too far: the footnoted details reveal that “positive” perceptions are in fact decreasing faster than “negative” perceptions. Such gloss in the face of record US fatalities (last month was by far America's deadliest April of the 10-year war) and mass intimidation in key cities, like Kandahar, suggests a fundamental underestimation of the insurgency's strength. Meanwhile, previous ISAF reports underestimate the insurgency's ideological zeal, pinning 80% as non-ideological grievance fighters. Such high-hoping explains why, as the April report puts it, “ISAF still does not fully understand the regenerative capacity of the insurgency.”

ISAF may begin drawing-down in July, but the diplomats are already drawing up – going to war with the understanding of the insurgency they have. In March came a report from Lakhdar Brahimi and Thomas R. Pickering claiming the time for talking to the Taliban has come. “Afghanistan: Negotiating Peace,” calls for “reconciliation” with the insurgents, whom President Karzai has already called “brothers.” Ambassador Pickering concedes that “the Taliban may press for tighter control in the name of Sharia,” but he sees “an opening”: “There are things that the Taliban have begun to move on: they're not eliminating all women's schools. That kind of thing.”

Unfortunately, even Ambassador Pickering's low standard of success is impossible without first securing the population. David Galula, a founding father of COIN theory, wrote, “the population will not talk unless it feels safe, and it does not feel safe until the insurgent's power has been broken.” Indeed, the population of nearby Zabul Province will not talk on cell phones unless the telecom providers feel safe, and for much of April they did not, thanks to the insurgency's unbroken power there. Yet for the “reconciliation” advocates, it seems what is most important is that the insurgents feel safe enough to talk.

Amrullah Saleh, the anti-Taliban hawk kicked out of his position as spy chief right when President Karzai's reconciliation program kicked off, and the planner of an anti-Taliban “national mobilization” protest set for Thursday in Kabul, recently told a Washington audience the ugly truth: “we hear the speeches of major Western politicians saying failure is not an option. Now it seems as if failure is an option.” Reconciliation and reintegration have their time in COIN, but not yet. Now is the time to fight the intimidation tactics and ideological appeal that have given the insurgency shadow control over some of Afghanistan's most important cities.

Recalling last week's Kandahar City prison break, one insurgent leader said “the most astonishing thing” was that while the escape lasted nearly five hours, it went unnoticed for another four. Fret as we might over reconciliation, we may soon notice there is no one left to reconcile.