[g8oz]

"It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.

“The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.

Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.

But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.

“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead."

-- Did the War in Afghanistan Have to Happen? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanis...

[eschulz]

To play Devil's Advocate, didn't the US have to label the Taliban as terrorists at that time? I think given their association with Bin Laden, and the 9/11 attacks, most people in the US considered the Taliban to be terrorists, and it would have completely destroyed the credibility of the Pentagon or Bush administration to be negotiating with them a mere 60 days after 9/11.

[boomboomsubban]

The first ~thirty days after 9/11 were full of negotiations with the Taliban as they weren't terrorists but harboring terrorists. Even after the invasion, they could have labeled it as the Taliban agreeing to help bring Bin Laden to justice and they would have been able to save face.

Hell, it might have helped prevent Bin Laden's flight into Pakistan, and have been a tremendous PR victory.

[eschulz]

You make a good point, but it leaves the Taliban of late 2001 with a very narrow path to successfully complete negotiations: give up Bin Laden in cooperation with the US and then hope the ramifications from Bin Laden's people are minimal and the US is satisfied to then leave you alone. Might have worked, but they succeeded in the waiting game.

"Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait. There is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all." - Tolstoy, War and Peace

[throwaway0a5e]

>Bin Laden in cooperation with the US and then hope the ramifications from Bin Laden's people are minimal and the US is satisfied to then leave you alone.

They could have negotiated the kinds of overt military support CIA installed South American despots could only dream of for the low, low price of treating Al Qaeda the way western democracies who are accountable to western voters could never treat them.

With the US's "aid" they could have consolidated power over the nation and legitimized themselves on the world stage. All they had to do was say "we'll turn over the terrorists but we need your help". We'd have gladly held our noses and given them training and equipment so long as they rooted out Al Qaeda. Of course the Taliban didn't want to be a puppet state or a client state. But we didn't want to engage in nation building. It would have been a perfect one night stand.

Hindsight is 20-20.

[foogazi]

> Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender

Seeing what the Taliban were able to do after being “completely defeated” makes me wonder if Karzai’s vision was realistic at all

[danans]

Being a movement in stark opposition to the current authority can be a powerful rallying force. Resentments are tremendously motivating. We see plenty of recent examples of that in the US itself.

Therefore it's not so surprising that the Taliban regained a lot of popular support, especially given the oft mentioned corruption of the prior government.

Of course now the boot is on the other foot, and the Taliban must provide the security and economic guarantees of a civil society, and the jury is out on both their willingness and ability to do so.

If they fail because they are too fixated on waging a puritanical religious war both within and without Afghanistan, financed by wealthy outside countries with their own agendas, they will be overthrown again, either from within, or from outside.

[watwut]

> If they fail because they are too fixated on waging a puritanical religious war both within and without Afghanistan, financed by wealthy outside countries with their own agendas, they will be overthrown again, either from within, or from outside.

Violent oppressive dictatorships can last very long tho.

[danans]

Even still, those authoritarian governments have to serve the needs of a large subset of the population, often biased on ethnicity, and have an overwhelming monopoly of force. Neither of those is likely in Afghanistan.

The Taliban themselves are motivated by the rather modern goal of uniting the country's fractious and diverse ethnic landscape ... albeit under the banner of their extreme interpretation of Islam.

[kumarvvr]

Read the article.

As per the opinion of the author, the Afghanistanis have no permanent affiliation. There is no ideological or ethical adherence to a particular side.

Sure, the top leaders might be so, but ground level fighters consider it a job. So, having a large number of fighters given amnesty and absorbed into the govt. would have, it is speculated, reduced a lot of expenses of running the country.

Apparently, there is also no retribution for ground level soldiers if they switch sides and switch back and what not.

Personally I suspect that ethnic and tribal lines are the ones not to be crossed.

[rhino369]

I'm skeptical that the Taliban leadership in 2001 would have actually followed any agreement in the long term. I'm envisioning them getting amnesty and then fleeing to Pakistan to start up the same insurgency they did anyway--just with less of their leadership killed by US bombs.

It's certainly not a risk I'd have taken without the hindsight that we have now.