Were There Alternatives to War in Afghanistan?

Should America have negotiated with the Taliban?

If a peace deal is not made between the Afghans, the withdrawal may lead to civil war, or worse, a Taliban takeover. Now, this outcome is far from certain and there is still time for hope. The withdrawal, however, may be long overdue. The suggested alternative to leaving Afghanistan appears to be a war without end, against an enemy who can never be defeated, and for a government who can often be just as criminal. The Afghan War is an impossible problem with no good solutions. It makes one ask the question, could this whole, terrible intervention have been avoided in the first place?

“ ‘I implore you,’ Mahmoud told the Ambassador, ‘not to act in anger. Real victory will come in negotiations.’ He said the Taliban were weak and ill-prepared to face an American onslaught. Omar himself, he said, is frightened. That much was clear in his last meeting. ‘We should get the Afghans to do this job for us,’ Mahmoud continued. ‘Reasoning with them to get rid of terrorism will be better than the use of brute force. If the strategic objective is Al Qaeda and UBL, it is better for the Afghans to do it. We could avoid the fallout.’ If the Taliban are eliminated, he said, Afghanistan will revert to warlordism.’ ”

“My response, first of all, is that strikes me as a request for delay and prevarication rather than any serious request. And second of all, they’re already overdue. They are already required by the United Nations resolutions that relate to the bombings in East Africa to turn over al-Qaida, to turn over their leadership, and to shut down the network of operations in their country. There should be no further delay. There is no cause to ask for anything else. They are already under this international obligation, and they have to meet it.”

The rest is history.

There are many questions that I can’t stop asking myself: What if Bush had taken up one of the Taliban’s multiple offers to negotiate? What if we had simply given Omar the evidence he so terribly wanted to see? What if we halted the bombings in October and gave Muttawakil time to try and persuade Omar? What if?

Now, I realize that the Taliban’s demands are very unfair to us. They wanted Bin Laden to be tried in either an Islamic court or in a third country. Bin Laden attacked American soil, so it is only right that he be tried according to our laws, or at least those that we recognize. The only third country I could see Bin Laden being extradited to is the Netherlands, where he would face justice at the International Criminal Court. The Taliban also had nothing to say about America’s other demands, such as handing over other Al Qaeda members and the destruction of the terrorist camps. They might not have been willing to go that far.

In the end, we’ll never know how negotiations would have turned out, because the U.S. never pursued them. I cannot promise that the Afghanistan War would have been averted had we spoken with the Taliban, maybe this was all inevitable as soon as the towers fell, but I still can’t help but think…

What if?

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