While the coming run-off elections are understandably the main preoccupation of all parties engaged in the Afghan project at present, they are but one of the key issues that need urgent attention.
Reconciliation of insurgents has to date been largely ineffective, but it holds significant promise if a way can be found to implement it effectively. It has been highlighted as a means of reducing the potency of the insurgency by Secretary of State Clinton, Afghan leaders, and in General McChrystal’s assessment of the conflict, which states that, “insurgents will have three choices: fight, flee, or reintegrate.”
The current mechanism for reconciliation of insurgents is the Independent Peace and Reconciliation Commission (PTS – Programme Takhim Sulh) set up by presidential decree in 2005. PTS maintains offices in 12 provinces, primarily in the East and South, and its mandate is to reach out to insurgents through tribal and religious contacts in order to offer them reconciliation. To date, just over six thousand insurgents have been reconciled, but few have been high profile fighters and the returns have been diminishing.
Speaking with PTS officials in the field it quickly becomes clear that this programme has long since run out of momentum having been starved of resources beyond funds for basic salaries for provincial staff. As a result of this lack of resources, PTS is not able to deliver any support to reconciled fighters, whether it be housing, jobs or other temporary support during their reintegration into society. Recent instructions from Kabul require all reconciled fighters to turn in their weapon in order to be eligible for reconciliation. What little outreach is still ongoing therefore presents would-be reconciling insurgents with the unpalatable proposition of admitting their past affiliation with the insurgency, signing up for a designation that makes them an insurgent target, and handing in their weapon without receiving any benefit at all. It is a small wonder that any reconciliation has taken place at all.
As Western leaders speak blithely about the great prospects reconciliation offers, they should realize that by starving the PTS programme of resources great damage has already been done to the very concept. Insurgents will have noted how their reconciled former colleagues have received no benefit for their change of allegiance, and how in some cases they have been “rewarded” by being arrested by ISAF and hauled off to a dark cell in Bagram. With that sort of advertising it’s clear what the result will be.
Despite these clear failures PTS is not a lost cause and it offers significant potential for reconciling low- to mid-level insurgents if it is revived and supported effectively. The one caveat is that if the programme ends up delivering real benefits it will be difficult to differentiate the real insurgents from those who simply claim to be insurgents to receive the benefits. Grand bargains have to be made to bring in key insurgent leaders, the Haqqani’s, Hekmatyar and their ilk, but it is conceivable that their rank and file can be significantly thinned by an effective PTS programme. This is highly relevant now as insurgents come under great pressure from the Pakmil in S-Waziristan on top of being long-harried by drone strikes. Already elements across the border are sending out feelers to PTS officials. That contact will lead nowhere if the PTS programme offers them nothing in return for reconciliation.
As is so often the case in this conflict, the ambitious talk in Kabul, Washington and London, is but a whisper when it reaches the Pashtun provinces. As Paddy Ashdown rightly pointed out recently, success in Afghanistan is unattainable unless we get things right at the provincial and district level. The new reconciliation strategy that is apparently making the rounds in Kabul must at the very least overcome the problems the cash-starved PTS has run into, or risk replicating its failure.
Sailani is a Westerner lucky enough to be living in the Pashtun heartland trying to have some limited impact of his own on the Afghan project.
This post was written by...
Sailani – author of 8 posts on Registan.net.
For information on reproducing this article, see our Terms of Use
