NATO's political will "wavering" in Afghanistan
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waraich66
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NATO played very impotant role in change of course of america in afghanistan.NATO generals admitting from last one year that peace in afghanistan can not be restored by war with talaban.
Idiot regeme of American leadership now realise that talaban should be included in power structure of afghanistan.
Idiot regeme of American leadership now realise that talaban should be included in power structure of afghanistan.
RabzonKhan
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Analysis: Afghanistan in peril
Najmuddin A Shaikh
October 24, 2008
The military situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply in this year. The UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, told the Security Council a few days ago that the number of security incidents in July and August were approximately 40 percent higher than in the same period in 2007. Earlier, the UN had reported that 1445 civilians had been killed in the first eight months of 2008, again around 40 percent more than in the same period in 2007.
And it is not just the security incidents. The Taliban are now rapidly expanding their zone of control. According to an American reporter, they are said to have a presence in all seven districts of the Logar province (about 40 km from Kabul), and total control in four of them. In Ghazni, the Taliban control 13 out of the 18 districts completely; while in Wardak, they control 6 out of 8.
In May this year, the Americans estimated that the Taliban have a fighting force of between 5,000 and 20,000, with about 1000 each for Hekmatyar and Haqqani, the other principal opponents of the Karzai regime.
The control the Taliban exercise over the provinces bordering Kabul, and the two large-scale attacks they launched on Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand and the largest producer of opium in Afghanistan, suggest that that either their strength is much higher, or they are able to deploy their resources more effectively than the coalition. They appear to have the resources to provide their foot-soldiers with better arms than are available to most of the Afghan army or police. Part of this is their drug revenue, but another part comes from foreign donors, who probably route their contributions through the Al Qaeda network.
The Afghan defence minister has claimed that Taliban activity has increased after the winding down of insurgency in Iraq, because those fighters have migrated to Afghanistan and jointed the Taliban. He has, however, offered no explanation of how these fighters reached Afghanistan. It would appear unlikely that they came through Pakistan, given the strict security now being maintained at Pakistani airports. This too, if it has indeed happened, can only be attributable to the Al Qaeda network.
There has been no noticeable improvement in governance in Afghanistan. Under western pressure, President Karzai reshuffled his cabinet last week, bringing in Mr Atmar as the new interior minister. Atmar is a former communist Pashtun, and during Najibullahs time was an official of the Afghan intelligence agency, KHAD. The former interior minister, Zarar Ahmad Muqbil, long accused of corruption, was not removed but instead shifted to the ministry for refugees.
This cabinet reshuffle was welcomed by UN envoy Eide as a demonstration of the political determination to implement the agreed agenda, particularly of strengthening the Afghan police.
It is not clear whether the new interior minister will be able to effect change in the level of corruption in the police, or the protection offered to drug traffickers. A recent media comment on corruption in Afghanistan stated that in the top levels of power...perhaps only the presidents brothers, Qayum and Mahmood, have taken possession of more land with no understandable way to pay for it. It is of course widely known that the third Karzai brother, Wali, is accused of being a key player in the Kandahar opium trade.
The opium trade continues to be the mainstay of the Afghan economy. The Americans have now secured NATO support for the task of interdicting opium processing and smuggling in association with the Afghans, while leaving the interdiction of cultivation to Afghan authorities. The drug trade yields around $4 billion annually.
The Taliban receive an estimated $100 million from the tax they impose on growers and traffickers. This figure may be exaggerated, but it is clear that the Taliban and the drug lords have a common interest in fostering instability throughout the country, particularly in the opium-growing south and south-east. Officials in the Karzai regime are beneficiaries of this trade and are not expected to help curb it.
The Americans do not seem to have a clear strategy in Afghanistan. Various agencies in Washington are undertaking reviews, the most recent being one ordered by General Petraeus, the new CENTCOM commander. This review would cover the entire region, from Iraq to Pakistan, and would have two major themes: government-led reconciliation of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries that are influential in the war.
Separately, the US Presidents senior advisor on Afghanistan and Iraq has tasked various agencies to re-address basic questions, including American objectives in Afghanistan, what can be achieved and what can be expected from the Pakistani and Afghan governments.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Gates is pushing US allies to provide the funding needed to expand the Afghan army to 134,000. Apart from the $20 billion needed for this task, a further 2 to 2.5 billion dollars would be needed annually to maintain the force. This would obviously have to be paid by the US and its allies.
It is ambiguous what such an army would mean for the regional balance of force. Further, it is not clear whether raising a force of this size, given the difficulty of recruitment in Pashtun areas, will create an ethnically balanced force or further alienate the Pashtuns. Some reports suggest that currently, almost 70 percent of the officer corps is Tajik.
There have also been reports suggesting that US forces are now considering using local tribal militias to combat the Taliban. This in effect will mean a reversal of the UN-led disbanding and disarming of illegal armed groups and a return to the warlord culture that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the ouster of the Taliban.
The new US administration will try to chalk out a workable strategy for Afghanistan. It is clear, however, that American withdrawal is not on the cards for some time to come. By the end of this year, an additional US brigade will arrive in Afghanistan and another two will follow next year if the situation in Iraq permits.
US pressure on NATO allies to increase their commitments will continue. Despite the setbacks, the coalition will not leave the area until it is reasonably sure that the Al Qaeda threat has been eliminated.
Is there any substance to the talk of Saudi-brokered reconciliation between the Taliban and the Karzai government? Their only condition is for the Taliban to break their ties with Al Qaeda and, by implication, drive it out of Afghanistan. One hopes this happens, but prospects are slim.
For the moment, the Taliban are doing well. While their success is largely due to the blunders of the Karzai government and the coalition, Al Qaeda support has played a significant role. It is clear that the Taliban are not as monolithic as sometimes assumed. Various power centres have developed and many vested interests have been created. The Taliban that have spoken about negotiations do not represent mainstream Taliban.
Pakistan must therefore formulate its policy on the assumption that the Americans are in Afghanistan for quite some time, and that reconciliation is a long way off.
The writer is a former foreign secretary
Najmuddin A Shaikh
October 24, 2008
The military situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply in this year. The UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, told the Security Council a few days ago that the number of security incidents in July and August were approximately 40 percent higher than in the same period in 2007. Earlier, the UN had reported that 1445 civilians had been killed in the first eight months of 2008, again around 40 percent more than in the same period in 2007.
And it is not just the security incidents. The Taliban are now rapidly expanding their zone of control. According to an American reporter, they are said to have a presence in all seven districts of the Logar province (about 40 km from Kabul), and total control in four of them. In Ghazni, the Taliban control 13 out of the 18 districts completely; while in Wardak, they control 6 out of 8.
In May this year, the Americans estimated that the Taliban have a fighting force of between 5,000 and 20,000, with about 1000 each for Hekmatyar and Haqqani, the other principal opponents of the Karzai regime.
The control the Taliban exercise over the provinces bordering Kabul, and the two large-scale attacks they launched on Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand and the largest producer of opium in Afghanistan, suggest that that either their strength is much higher, or they are able to deploy their resources more effectively than the coalition. They appear to have the resources to provide their foot-soldiers with better arms than are available to most of the Afghan army or police. Part of this is their drug revenue, but another part comes from foreign donors, who probably route their contributions through the Al Qaeda network.
The Afghan defence minister has claimed that Taliban activity has increased after the winding down of insurgency in Iraq, because those fighters have migrated to Afghanistan and jointed the Taliban. He has, however, offered no explanation of how these fighters reached Afghanistan. It would appear unlikely that they came through Pakistan, given the strict security now being maintained at Pakistani airports. This too, if it has indeed happened, can only be attributable to the Al Qaeda network.
There has been no noticeable improvement in governance in Afghanistan. Under western pressure, President Karzai reshuffled his cabinet last week, bringing in Mr Atmar as the new interior minister. Atmar is a former communist Pashtun, and during Najibullahs time was an official of the Afghan intelligence agency, KHAD. The former interior minister, Zarar Ahmad Muqbil, long accused of corruption, was not removed but instead shifted to the ministry for refugees.
This cabinet reshuffle was welcomed by UN envoy Eide as a demonstration of the political determination to implement the agreed agenda, particularly of strengthening the Afghan police.
It is not clear whether the new interior minister will be able to effect change in the level of corruption in the police, or the protection offered to drug traffickers. A recent media comment on corruption in Afghanistan stated that in the top levels of power...perhaps only the presidents brothers, Qayum and Mahmood, have taken possession of more land with no understandable way to pay for it. It is of course widely known that the third Karzai brother, Wali, is accused of being a key player in the Kandahar opium trade.
The opium trade continues to be the mainstay of the Afghan economy. The Americans have now secured NATO support for the task of interdicting opium processing and smuggling in association with the Afghans, while leaving the interdiction of cultivation to Afghan authorities. The drug trade yields around $4 billion annually.
The Taliban receive an estimated $100 million from the tax they impose on growers and traffickers. This figure may be exaggerated, but it is clear that the Taliban and the drug lords have a common interest in fostering instability throughout the country, particularly in the opium-growing south and south-east. Officials in the Karzai regime are beneficiaries of this trade and are not expected to help curb it.
The Americans do not seem to have a clear strategy in Afghanistan. Various agencies in Washington are undertaking reviews, the most recent being one ordered by General Petraeus, the new CENTCOM commander. This review would cover the entire region, from Iraq to Pakistan, and would have two major themes: government-led reconciliation of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries that are influential in the war.
Separately, the US Presidents senior advisor on Afghanistan and Iraq has tasked various agencies to re-address basic questions, including American objectives in Afghanistan, what can be achieved and what can be expected from the Pakistani and Afghan governments.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Gates is pushing US allies to provide the funding needed to expand the Afghan army to 134,000. Apart from the $20 billion needed for this task, a further 2 to 2.5 billion dollars would be needed annually to maintain the force. This would obviously have to be paid by the US and its allies.
It is ambiguous what such an army would mean for the regional balance of force. Further, it is not clear whether raising a force of this size, given the difficulty of recruitment in Pashtun areas, will create an ethnically balanced force or further alienate the Pashtuns. Some reports suggest that currently, almost 70 percent of the officer corps is Tajik.
There have also been reports suggesting that US forces are now considering using local tribal militias to combat the Taliban. This in effect will mean a reversal of the UN-led disbanding and disarming of illegal armed groups and a return to the warlord culture that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the ouster of the Taliban.
The new US administration will try to chalk out a workable strategy for Afghanistan. It is clear, however, that American withdrawal is not on the cards for some time to come. By the end of this year, an additional US brigade will arrive in Afghanistan and another two will follow next year if the situation in Iraq permits.
US pressure on NATO allies to increase their commitments will continue. Despite the setbacks, the coalition will not leave the area until it is reasonably sure that the Al Qaeda threat has been eliminated.
Is there any substance to the talk of Saudi-brokered reconciliation between the Taliban and the Karzai government? Their only condition is for the Taliban to break their ties with Al Qaeda and, by implication, drive it out of Afghanistan. One hopes this happens, but prospects are slim.
For the moment, the Taliban are doing well. While their success is largely due to the blunders of the Karzai government and the coalition, Al Qaeda support has played a significant role. It is clear that the Taliban are not as monolithic as sometimes assumed. Various power centres have developed and many vested interests have been created. The Taliban that have spoken about negotiations do not represent mainstream Taliban.
Pakistan must therefore formulate its policy on the assumption that the Americans are in Afghanistan for quite some time, and that reconciliation is a long way off.
The writer is a former foreign secretary
RabzonKhan
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Interesting.
U.S. Mulls Talks With Taliban in Bid to Quell Afghan Unrest
Gen. Petraeus Backs Effort to Win Over Some Elements of Group
U.S. NEWS OCTOBER 28, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is actively considering talks with elements of the Taliban, the armed Islamist group that once ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al Qaeda, in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.
Senior White House and military officials believe that engaging some levels of the Taliban -- while excluding top leaders -- could help reverse a pronounced downward spiral in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Both countries have been destabilized by a recent wave of violence.
The outreach is a draft recommendation in a classified White House assessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, according to senior Bush administration officials. The officials said that the recommendation calls for the talks to be led by the Afghan central government, but with the active participation of the U.S.
The idea is supported by Gen. David Petraeus, who will assume responsibility this week for U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Petraeus used a similar approach in Iraq, where a U.S. push to enlist Sunni tribes in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq helped sharply reduce the country's violence. Gen. Petraeus earlier this month publicly endorsed talks with less extreme Taliban elements.
The final White House recommendations, which could differ from the draft, are not expected until after next month's elections. The next administration wouldn't be compelled to implement them. But the support of Gen. Petraeus, the highly regarded incoming head of the U.S. Central Command, could help ensure that the policy is put in place regardless of who wins next month's elections.
The proposed policy appears to strike rare common ground with both presidential candidates. Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama has said he thinks talks with the Taliban should be considered and has advocated shifting more military forces to Afghanistan. Republican contender Sen. John McCain supports, as part of his strategy, reaching out to tribal leaders in an effort to separate "the reconcilable elements of the insurgency from the irreconcilable elements of the insurgency," Randy Scheunemann, the campaign's top foreign-policy adviser, said Monday.
The U.S. policy review is taking place against the backdrop of ongoing talks between Taliban sympathizers and Afghan government officials. The negotiations, which have been held in recent weeks in Saudi Arabia and moderated by Saudi officials, have primarily involved former Taliban members who have since left the armed group. But a U.S. official said some of the discussions have included current Taliban members and others with close ties to the group's leadership.
Mutual Distrust
U.S. talks would have to overcome years of mutual distrust, a U.S. policy that has favored arrest rather than outreach, and some doubts over whether participants on the Taliban side would be credible. But the possibility of U.S. talks with Taliban officials comes amid a wholesale restructuring of American policy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The U.S. has endorsed a Pakistani move to arm thousands of anti-Taliban fighters along the country's porous border with Afghanistan, and senior American officials say they are considering creating similar local militias in Afghanistan as well.
With violence worsening, the U.S. is also taking some harsher measures. The Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Command have stepped up a campaign of missile strikes against militant targets inside Pakistan, a source of mounting casualties and growing public anger there. The U.S. is planning to deploy at least 12,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year.
Few of the new measures would carry as much political and emotional weight as talking with members of the Taliban, an armed group that has been an American foe since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that followed the attacks was designed to oust the Taliban over its harboring of al Qaeda, and U.S. troops have spent the past seven years trying to capture or kill as many of its members as possible.
U.S. officials stress that they would play a supporting role in any future talks with the Taliban, which they say would be led by the Afghan central government and powerful Afghan tribal figures. The talks would primarily include lower-ranking and mid-level Taliban figures, not top officials from the group's ruling body.
"We'll never be at the table with Mullah Omar," one U.S. official said, referring to the fugitive leader of the Taliban.
The prospective talks would have two main goals, according to senior American officials: extending the Kabul government's authority across Afghanistan and persuading some Taliban figures to cease their attacks against U.S. and Afghan targets.
"We all agree on the need for the people of Afghanistan to come together if they are going to succeed in creating a lasting and viable state," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said by email. "It remains to be seen if some in the Taliban will really renounce violence and extremism and play a constructive role in Afghanistan."
U.S. opposition to talks with the Taliban has been dissolving as the security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan continues to deteriorate. The number of attacks across Afghanistan has skyrocketed, and more U.S. troops are dying there than in Iraq. Pakistan has been rocked by a wave of attacks, including a massive bombing at a Marriott hotel in the capital of Islamabad and the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
War Negotiations
"Most wars don't end on the basis of complete capitulation," said Kara Bue, a former State Department official who recently was co-chairwoman of an outside working group on Pakistan policy. "They're ended in many cases on the basis of negotiations."
It's far from clear that Taliban members with real control over the group's operations will want to take part in talks with the U.S. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has long supported reconciling with Taliban leaders who are willing to accept Kabul's authority and cut any links to al Qaeda, but U.S. and Afghan officials acknowledge that few Taliban figures were willing to make those commitments.
The two sides would also have to bridge a turbulent history of efforts at contact. Former Taliban Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil approached U.S. officials in early 2002 about working together, but the U.S. responded by arresting him. He was held at Guantanamo Bay for four years and has since returned in Kabul.
In subsequent years, some U.S. officials quietly conducted informal outreach to Taliban leaders, but the military was more interested in taking them into custody, said a former senior U.S. intelligence official. "There were instances where Taliban [leaders] were willing to work with us, and we didn't want to deal with them at all," the former official said.
Talking to the Taliban has been a sensitive issue for the Afghan government as well. Last year, Mr. Karzai expelled a United Nations diplomat, plus a second who worked for the European Union, for conducting negotiations with Taliban leaders without Kabul's specific consent.
Senior U.S. officials who are working on the White House review said the recommendations may not explicitly call for joining the Afghan government's talks with the Taliban, but may instead refer to greater interaction with local Afghan leaders in unstable parts of the country. In restive eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, where many Pashtun tribal leaders are Taliban or Taliban sympathizers, this strategy would effectively amount to dealing with the Taliban, these U.S. officials said.
"We and the Afghans negotiate with the tribes every day on the district level," said a senior State Department official working on the review. "Sometimes they're Taliban or their supporters. Often they say: 'If we get what we want, we'll lay down our arms.'"
Another senior American official said that talks with the Taliban will force the U.S. to make hard decisions about how much to offer the armed group for its support.
The U.S. would certainly be willing to pay moderate Taliban members to lay down their weapons and join the political process, these official said. But Taliban demands for amnesty and formal political authority over remote parts of the country might be harder to stomach, he said.
"The question always comes down to price," he said. "How much should be willing to offer guys like this?"
Current and former officials attributed the White House's policy shift to the influence of Gen. Petraeus. "I do think you have to talk to enemies," he said Oct. 8 during a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "You want to try to reconcile with as many of those as possible while then identifying those who truly are irreconcilable."
Not everything that worked in Iraq will work in Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus cautioned. Still, he said that engaging some members of the Taliban would be "a positive step."
Ms. Bue, the former State Department official, said U.S. officials would at a minimum want Afghan militants to help U.S. and Afghan forces root out the foreign fighters who have been responsible for most of the bloodiest attacks in Afghanistan.
Mapping Tribal Areas
U.S. officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. military's Special Operations Command have been mapping the key tribal areas of Afghanistan, said one person familiar with the planning. The goal is to look at the tribes, sub-tribes and clans in each province and understand whom they're aligned with. Targeting lower-level leaders is likely to be more fruitful than focusing on senior figures, said Seth Jones, a Middle Eastern analyst at the Rand Corp. think tank who travels regularly to Afghanistan.
The leadership of the Taliban may have no incentive to negotiate because they view themselves as winning the conflict and because "their vision of the country is so diametrically opposed" to that of the central Afghan government, he said.
U.S. Mulls Talks With Taliban in Bid to Quell Afghan Unrest
Gen. Petraeus Backs Effort to Win Over Some Elements of Group
U.S. NEWS OCTOBER 28, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is actively considering talks with elements of the Taliban, the armed Islamist group that once ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al Qaeda, in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.
Senior White House and military officials believe that engaging some levels of the Taliban -- while excluding top leaders -- could help reverse a pronounced downward spiral in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Both countries have been destabilized by a recent wave of violence.
The outreach is a draft recommendation in a classified White House assessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, according to senior Bush administration officials. The officials said that the recommendation calls for the talks to be led by the Afghan central government, but with the active participation of the U.S.
The idea is supported by Gen. David Petraeus, who will assume responsibility this week for U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Petraeus used a similar approach in Iraq, where a U.S. push to enlist Sunni tribes in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq helped sharply reduce the country's violence. Gen. Petraeus earlier this month publicly endorsed talks with less extreme Taliban elements.
The final White House recommendations, which could differ from the draft, are not expected until after next month's elections. The next administration wouldn't be compelled to implement them. But the support of Gen. Petraeus, the highly regarded incoming head of the U.S. Central Command, could help ensure that the policy is put in place regardless of who wins next month's elections.
The proposed policy appears to strike rare common ground with both presidential candidates. Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama has said he thinks talks with the Taliban should be considered and has advocated shifting more military forces to Afghanistan. Republican contender Sen. John McCain supports, as part of his strategy, reaching out to tribal leaders in an effort to separate "the reconcilable elements of the insurgency from the irreconcilable elements of the insurgency," Randy Scheunemann, the campaign's top foreign-policy adviser, said Monday.
The U.S. policy review is taking place against the backdrop of ongoing talks between Taliban sympathizers and Afghan government officials. The negotiations, which have been held in recent weeks in Saudi Arabia and moderated by Saudi officials, have primarily involved former Taliban members who have since left the armed group. But a U.S. official said some of the discussions have included current Taliban members and others with close ties to the group's leadership.
Mutual Distrust
U.S. talks would have to overcome years of mutual distrust, a U.S. policy that has favored arrest rather than outreach, and some doubts over whether participants on the Taliban side would be credible. But the possibility of U.S. talks with Taliban officials comes amid a wholesale restructuring of American policy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The U.S. has endorsed a Pakistani move to arm thousands of anti-Taliban fighters along the country's porous border with Afghanistan, and senior American officials say they are considering creating similar local militias in Afghanistan as well.
With violence worsening, the U.S. is also taking some harsher measures. The Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Command have stepped up a campaign of missile strikes against militant targets inside Pakistan, a source of mounting casualties and growing public anger there. The U.S. is planning to deploy at least 12,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year.
Few of the new measures would carry as much political and emotional weight as talking with members of the Taliban, an armed group that has been an American foe since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that followed the attacks was designed to oust the Taliban over its harboring of al Qaeda, and U.S. troops have spent the past seven years trying to capture or kill as many of its members as possible.
U.S. officials stress that they would play a supporting role in any future talks with the Taliban, which they say would be led by the Afghan central government and powerful Afghan tribal figures. The talks would primarily include lower-ranking and mid-level Taliban figures, not top officials from the group's ruling body.
"We'll never be at the table with Mullah Omar," one U.S. official said, referring to the fugitive leader of the Taliban.
The prospective talks would have two main goals, according to senior American officials: extending the Kabul government's authority across Afghanistan and persuading some Taliban figures to cease their attacks against U.S. and Afghan targets.
"We all agree on the need for the people of Afghanistan to come together if they are going to succeed in creating a lasting and viable state," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said by email. "It remains to be seen if some in the Taliban will really renounce violence and extremism and play a constructive role in Afghanistan."
U.S. opposition to talks with the Taliban has been dissolving as the security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan continues to deteriorate. The number of attacks across Afghanistan has skyrocketed, and more U.S. troops are dying there than in Iraq. Pakistan has been rocked by a wave of attacks, including a massive bombing at a Marriott hotel in the capital of Islamabad and the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
War Negotiations
"Most wars don't end on the basis of complete capitulation," said Kara Bue, a former State Department official who recently was co-chairwoman of an outside working group on Pakistan policy. "They're ended in many cases on the basis of negotiations."
It's far from clear that Taliban members with real control over the group's operations will want to take part in talks with the U.S. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has long supported reconciling with Taliban leaders who are willing to accept Kabul's authority and cut any links to al Qaeda, but U.S. and Afghan officials acknowledge that few Taliban figures were willing to make those commitments.
The two sides would also have to bridge a turbulent history of efforts at contact. Former Taliban Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil approached U.S. officials in early 2002 about working together, but the U.S. responded by arresting him. He was held at Guantanamo Bay for four years and has since returned in Kabul.
In subsequent years, some U.S. officials quietly conducted informal outreach to Taliban leaders, but the military was more interested in taking them into custody, said a former senior U.S. intelligence official. "There were instances where Taliban [leaders] were willing to work with us, and we didn't want to deal with them at all," the former official said.
Talking to the Taliban has been a sensitive issue for the Afghan government as well. Last year, Mr. Karzai expelled a United Nations diplomat, plus a second who worked for the European Union, for conducting negotiations with Taliban leaders without Kabul's specific consent.
Senior U.S. officials who are working on the White House review said the recommendations may not explicitly call for joining the Afghan government's talks with the Taliban, but may instead refer to greater interaction with local Afghan leaders in unstable parts of the country. In restive eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, where many Pashtun tribal leaders are Taliban or Taliban sympathizers, this strategy would effectively amount to dealing with the Taliban, these U.S. officials said.
"We and the Afghans negotiate with the tribes every day on the district level," said a senior State Department official working on the review. "Sometimes they're Taliban or their supporters. Often they say: 'If we get what we want, we'll lay down our arms.'"
Another senior American official said that talks with the Taliban will force the U.S. to make hard decisions about how much to offer the armed group for its support.
The U.S. would certainly be willing to pay moderate Taliban members to lay down their weapons and join the political process, these official said. But Taliban demands for amnesty and formal political authority over remote parts of the country might be harder to stomach, he said.
"The question always comes down to price," he said. "How much should be willing to offer guys like this?"
Current and former officials attributed the White House's policy shift to the influence of Gen. Petraeus. "I do think you have to talk to enemies," he said Oct. 8 during a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "You want to try to reconcile with as many of those as possible while then identifying those who truly are irreconcilable."
Not everything that worked in Iraq will work in Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus cautioned. Still, he said that engaging some members of the Taliban would be "a positive step."
Ms. Bue, the former State Department official, said U.S. officials would at a minimum want Afghan militants to help U.S. and Afghan forces root out the foreign fighters who have been responsible for most of the bloodiest attacks in Afghanistan.
Mapping Tribal Areas
U.S. officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. military's Special Operations Command have been mapping the key tribal areas of Afghanistan, said one person familiar with the planning. The goal is to look at the tribes, sub-tribes and clans in each province and understand whom they're aligned with. Targeting lower-level leaders is likely to be more fruitful than focusing on senior figures, said Seth Jones, a Middle Eastern analyst at the Rand Corp. think tank who travels regularly to Afghanistan.
The leadership of the Taliban may have no incentive to negotiate because they view themselves as winning the conflict and because "their vision of the country is so diametrically opposed" to that of the central Afghan government, he said.
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