Both the Bonn conference and the one in Istanbul that took place last month were based on the assumption that diplomacy can ensure a successful political transition in Afghanistan.
The current international diplomatic effort is taking place at a time when the weakness of the United States and its allies is manifest and the domestic support in the West for a long-term military involvement in Afghanistan is fast eroding.
Diplomacy can be a useful complement to the successful application of military power. But it cannot be a substitute for military victory.
Having earlier underestimated the resilience of the Taliban, which enjoys the Pakistan army’s support, Washington and its allies are now negotiating from a position of weakness.
The leaders of the Taliban, meanwhile, had chosen to kill former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, Kabul’s principal interlocutor for negotiating a political reconciliation. That revealed the Taliban’s “commitment” to a “peaceful resolution” of the civil war.
The history of civil wars in our age reminds us that they are not easily amenable to a negotiated compromise. More often than not, civil wars end in the victory of one party over the others. The Sri Lankan conflict is the latest example of that trend-line.
Third, diplomacy can succeed only when the divergence of interests between different parties to a conflict is bridgeable, and there is room for finding win-win solutions to all.
In Afghanistan, what we have instead is a zero-sum game.
The world says it wants a strong and centralised state in Afghanistan. Pakistan, in contrast, wants a weak state in Afghanistan that it can control.
For the US this means either leaving Afghanistan at the mercy of the Pakistan army or turning up military and economic heat on Rawalpindi in order to change its strategic calculus.
Meanwhile, Washington is in two minds. The Obama administration understands that the Pakistan army is part of the problem in Afghanistan, but is unwilling to follow through with the consequences of such an assessment given its dependence on Rawalpindi for conducting military operations.
Rawalpindi’s boldness in confronting the US is indeed impressive.
As Washington dithers and Rawalpindi overreaches, India cannot bet on international conference diplomacy of the kind we have seen in Bonn.
Terrorism and Islamist extremism are now very much part of our lives in the subcontinent. Daily and gruesome killings of innocent people in the name of jihad no longer raise many eyebrows in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
India has seen some major terror attacks — on Mumbai in November 2008 and on Parliament in December 2001.
Before the next round of international conference diplomacy on Afghanistan in Berlin next month, Washington hopes to complete its bilateral negotiations with Kabul on drafting a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA).
The essential purpose of the SPA was to put in place a credible, long-term American political commitment to the post-Taliban Afghanistan.
The old Silk Road connected China, India, Persia, Arabia, Rome and Egypt through a network of routes that moved merchants and preachers, goods and ideas across the vast Eurasian landmass.
The creation of modern territorial states steadily closed down inner Asian frontiers that were once the most open and productive in the world. As a result, Afghanistan, Central Asia and western China are now landlocked.
The United States for now is insisting on a “fight, talk, build” strategy that seeks to maintain the military pressure on the Taliban and the Haqqani network, but is keeping the door open for talks with them.
The Taliban’s tactics seem no different. They have stepped up the attacks in Afghanistan and is betting that the United States can be compelled to make more concessions.
Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai, declared once again that there was no point in talking to the Taliban any more.
His point is that the peace process in Afghanistan is not about internal reconciliation, but of external interference from across the Durand Line.
intelligence officials in Kabul have accused the ISI of plotting the murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president of Afghanistan appointed by Karzai as the interlocutor with the Taliban.
