Secretary of State Antony Blinken has sent a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani outlining ways forward for the Afghan peace process. Meanwhile, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, has provided the Afghan government and the Taliban with a draft peace plan. Taken together, these actions affirm a naivete in the face of Islamist terror. A naivete that exceeds even President Barack Obama and John Kerry’s former empowerment of Iran.
Consider the details.
Blinken suggests holding an international conference that will immediately delegitimize the elected Afghan government. He also seeks to impose a solution that concedes effective control of Afghanistan’s government to the Taliban. He then makes Turkey, the government of which empowered and supported the Islamic State, the primary mediator between Kabul and the Taliban. Finally, he assures Afghanistan’s elected leader that America seeks to reduce Afghan violence.
The real problem is in Khalilzad’s peace plan.
What Khalilzad and, by extension, Blinken and Biden propose is a supreme religious council to which the Taliban can appoint seven members. This council would then serve as a de facto supreme court and opine on the legitimacy of any law passed by the government. While the current government could also appoint seven members and the president one additional one, such actions merely set the stage for Taliban assassinations of those who do not subordinate themselves to their dictates. The Khalilzad proposal also raises the possibility of suspending the Parliament while the appointed peace council takes over. The problem here, of course, is that there is no guarantee the peace council would ever forfeit power.
History offers a useful guide as to the should-be-obvious risks here. Remember, prior to consolidating the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini repeatedly assured gullible diplomats that he had no interest in personal power. In effect, Biden and Blinken are seeking to replace Afghanistan’s centrist republican system with a Sunni version of Iran’s theocratic one.
Here’s the broader problem: Throughout the peace process, there has not been any violation Khalilzad was unwilling to excuse or that President Donald Trump, at the time, wasn't willing to ignore. Perhaps the great violation of the letter and spirit of the Feb. 29, 2020, peace deal between the Taliban and the United States was the Taliban’s continued sheltering of al Qaeda.
If the peace deal goes forward and the Taliban join a transitional government, then the Taliban will also be part of Afghanistan’s diplomatic service. That would leave the group that works fist-in-glove with al Qaeda not only in the heart of Washington, but with diplomatic privileges to transport to embassy grounds any material they might need. The same holds true for Afghanistan’s U.N. mission in New York. If Biden and Blinken wanted to empower the Taliban to shift their fight from the hinterlands of Afghanistan into the heart of America’s cities, they would find no better way than the latest Khalilzad plan.
The article was first published in Washington Examiner on March 9, 2021.
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
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