Should the US negotiate with the Taliban?

    Should the United States negotiate with the Afghan faction that allowed al Qaeda to mount its 9/11 offensive against the United States? 

     During his recent trip to Afghanistan, President Obama stated that “my administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban.”  He believes that the conflict can only be ended through “reconciliation,”   and has publicly proclaimed a 2014 date for ending U.S. combat operations.  It is a stunning departure from America’s long-standing policy, specifically decreed in a State Department document issued before the 9/11 attack, to “Make no concession to terrorists and to strike no deals.”  It is a tradition that goes back to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who used the scarce resource of a nation still in its infancy to protect Americans from the Barbary Pirates.

     The Taliban has opened a political office in Qatar.  True to form, its leadership group, the Quetta Shura, been reluctant to include the current Afghan national government in discussions.  In fact, it has been linked to last month’s assassination of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul.  The Taliban’s concept of negotiation appears to be merely to reduce confrontation until the U.S. ceases fighting in 2014.  According to the National Intelligence Estimate, the pro-terrorist group is confident that they will retake complete power within several years.  A Brookings Institute study recently concluded the Taliban considers Washington’s willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness, and that their re-conquest of Afghanistan is inevitable.

     Despite his current support of the Administration’s policy, Vice President Biden, while still a senator in 2007, noted that “The Taliban is back—keeping much of Afghanistan ungovernable.”

     Legal author Shannon Wiley questions whether the Taliban is even Afghani.  She notes that many are actually Pakistani members of the Pashtun tribe.  “Nevertheless,” she writes, “these men now claim Afghanistan as their own, and seek to impose their interpretation of Islamic law upon its people.” 

     There is a serious question of the morality of negotiating with the sponsors of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks across the globe. The Brooking Institute study found that “After ten plus years, …the Taliban leadership has not changed.  They are not peacemakers.  They are not ready to abandon al Qaeda.”

     Moral outrage to negotiating with the Taliban is due to more than its support of worldwide terrorism.  It also comes from its hellish treatment of the people of Afghanistan while in power from 1996 to 2001.  Its extreme tyranny included not only the complete absence of any semblance of decency and freedom, but the virtual enslavement of women.  The United Nations found it to be “The most misogynist entity in the world.”

    Prior to the Taliban’s regime, Afghani women had made great progress. In 1977, for example, 15% of their nation’s legislators were female.  In the 1990’s, 70% of school teachers, 50% of government workers, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were female.  After the Taliban took over, women were banished from the work force, forbidden to attend school, prohibited to leave their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative, and were not allowed to be treated by male physicians (a virtual death decree, since there were almost no female doctors permitted to practice.)

    Americans are understandably weary from the long Afghan war.  But the Administration’s virtual surrender to the Taliban will result in nothing less than the need to return to that nation again after the Taliban returns and resumes its support of worldwide terrorism and the oppression of the Afghan people.