As these frictions undermined the prospects of reconciliation, the drawdown of international forces was eroding American leverage. With the Taliban intransigent on the travel ban and Karzai objecting to the office, the process was stuck. Discussions about the political office leaked to the press.1 The report caused a major stir within the insurgency, noted former intelligence officials and Taliban experts. Taliban commanders wondered if the senior leaders were trying to cut a deal with Karzai.2
Perhaps wanting to keep the effort secret until they had an accord with the United States, the Taliban’s leadership had not fully discussed the political office and its purpose with its membership. They moved to control the damage. “In this regard,” explained Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, “we have started preliminary talks, and we have reached a preliminary understanding with relevant sides, including the government of Qatar, to have a political office for negotiations with the international community.” The office, he emphasized, was not going to talk immediately with the Karzai government (a condition Karzai said was unacceptable). Reflecting how the Taliban leadership considered the conflict to have external and internal dimensions, he continued: “There are two essential sides in the current situation in the country that has been ongoing for the past ten years. One is the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and the other side is the United States of America and their foreign allies.”3 He mentioned, in particular, that the Taliban sought the release of GTMO detainees.4
This episode reveals how the Taliban leadership responds to the rank and file. The Eid statements attributed to Mullah Omar from 2009 onward discussed a variety of issues regarding relationships with the international community, distancing from terrorism, and relatively progressive comments on governance and human rights. None of these statements created any stir in the Taliban ranks. The announcement about the office did. From early January until mid-February 2012, the Taliban issued no fewer than seven statements concerning the office and ongoing negotiations.5 The winter months are when Taliban leaders tend to gather in Pakistan for annual discussions about their upcoming military campaign, so the Doha office was likely a subject of debate. The Taliban leadership managed to build the necessary consensus about the office during that time but would need to proceed more carefully in the future.6
The Obama administration wanted to get the Taliban office moving forward again. Defense officials continued to express concerns about the lack of coordination and an agreed framework with the Afghan government. Grossman met with Karzai in January 2012 before heading to Doha for another round of talks with the Taliban. Karzai made three demands for the office: Qatari government representatives needed to come to Kabul to explain the office to him, the Afghan government would rewrite the rules as the grantor of the office to the Taliban, and the Taliban had to meet in advance with the Afghan government.7 These were three well-crafted poison pills designed to derail what Karzai perceived to be a highly dangerous process.
Grossman flew to Doha and outlined Karzai’s three demands. The Taliban and Qatari representatives reacted in shock.8 Karzai had insulted the Qataris a month earlier by recalling his ambassador; the Gulf nation believed that they had done nothing wrong and were trying to help resolve the conflict. The Americans had said that Karzai was on board. For the Qataris to come penitently to Kabul to seek Karzai’s forgiveness and blessing was tough to swallow. Second, the Taliban were not willing for the office to be a gift from the Afghan government; that would be recognizing the government’s legitimacy before they were ready to do so and placing the Taliban in a supplicant position. Third, the meeting with the Afghan government was agreed to come at the end of the US-Taliban confidence-building process. Particularly given the internal strife over the office earlier that month and their explanations that they were not talking with Karzai, the Taliban could not accept a meeting with the Afghan government as a precondition.9
Tayyab Agha replied that he would consult with “the leadership” about the demands and reiterated the Taliban’s nonconcurrence on the travel ban for the GTMO-5. I asked him to consider whether the five were better off in GTMO or spending time with their families in Doha. Two months later, the Taliban issued a statement suspending the talks, suggesting that the United States was negotiating in bad faith.10 They had always considered Karzai a puppet. If the Americans were serious about the effort, they believed, they would have forced him to accept the office. The United States had a long history of ignoring or overriding Karzai’s wishes and concerns on matters like civilian casualties, detentions, night raids, the 2009 surge, parallel governance structures, anticorruption measures, and reconciliation.
Reconciliation remained in limbo for the rest of 2012. On the first anniversary of the successful bin Laden raid, Obama announced during a speech at Bagram Air Base that he had signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with the Afghan government. He also provided an update on the five lines of effort and the pace of the drawdown of US forces. “In coordination with the Afghan government,” he explained, “my administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban. We’ve made it clear that they can be a part of this future if they break with al Qaeda, renounce violence, and abide by Afghan laws. . . . The path to peace is now set before them. Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan security forces, backed by the United States and our allies.”11 The Taliban were unmoved.
By continuing the drawdown, the United States was losing negotiating leverage. The military pressure kept declining. The Taliban had every reason to believe they could wait out the American presence and that their advantage would be higher when fighting with the Afghan government unaided by over 100,000 international troops. They would be very unlikely to risk dissension in the ranks to make such large concessions right away. If Obama viewed that working toward a peace process was more important than completing the drawdown, he could amass plenty of reasons for extending the troop presence—the September 2011 attack on the US embassy, the assassination of Rabbani, Pakistani intransigence, the Taliban’s suspension of talks. His administration continued to testify that the war was on track.
In early 2013 the Qataris attempted to restart discussions on the Taliban office. The Taliban indicated that they were willing to make another go at it, and US officials put pressure on the Afghan government to move forward. Karzai acceded but insisted that the office was for negotiations between the High Peace Council and the Taliban. The joint statement by Obama and Karzai in January 2013 summarized the agreed points: “The Leaders said that they would support an office in Doha for the purpose of negotiations between the High Peace Council and the authorized representatives of the Taliban. In this context, the Leaders called on the armed opposition to join a political process, including by taking those steps necessary to open a Taliban office. They urged the Government of Qatar to facilitate this effort.” They also agreed to negotiate a bilateral security agreement (BSA). “The scope and nature of any possible post-2014 U.S. presence, legal protections for U.S. forces, and security cooperation between the two countries is to be specified in the Bilateral Security Agreement.”12 Obama made it quite clear that the United States would not maintain troops in Afghanistan after 2014 without a BSA. His withdrawal from Iraq after the Status of Forces Agreement negotiations failed underscored the point.
US officials worked over the next few months to get an agreement to open the office. A team of us met with Afghan national security advisor Dadfar Spanta in May 2013. He said that the Afghan government could support a US-Qatar-Taliban agreement on the office if the Afghan government could review and approve the document and if the Qataris would agree to a strategic partnership with the Afghan government first. The Qataris demurred. Spanta then suggested that there be no written agreements at all. If there could be no written agreement between the two governments, there should be no written agreement between the Qataris and the Taliban. All parties, including the Taliban, agreed to this idea.13 Seeking assurances, Karzai asked for a letter from President Obama that the office would be for negotiations with the High Peace Council and not refer to itself as “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” or look or act as an embassy. Obama provided the letter in June.14 One potentially fatal flaw, however, remained. Without a written agreement about the rules of the office, the Taliban could do whatever they wanted.
The date for the official opening was June 18, 2013, the same day as the transition ceremony marking the transfer of lead security responsibilities across the country from ISAF to the ANSF. The latter was the signature event of the civil-military campaign since 2009.15 When I asked if the United States should offset the dates, a senior White House official brushed aside the concerns and said that having both on the same day would be a statement of progress. Indicators that the Taliban were going to make a spectacle of the office opening prompted Defense and Kabul embassy officials to suggest that the United States double-check that the Taliban were meeting US requirements.16
The military transition ceremony took place in the morning to moderate media coverage. A couple of hours later, the Qatari-based al Jazeera televised worldwide the opening ceremony for the Taliban office. A senior official from the Qatari foreign ministry stood at a podium next to a Taliban representative amid Taliban flags. A large banner behind the speakers declared the opening of the “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” (emphasis added). The office was in a large enclosed compound in the same area of Doha as other embassies. “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” read a plaque on the outside wall. A Taliban flag flew in the courtyard.17 A US official reportedly involved in the process explained that the event “very much reflects this whole process, which began with a series of Loya Jirgas that Karzai held in 2010 and 2011. It includes the Karzai visit here to Washington in January [2013]. And this is an Afghan initiative, and it’s a perfect representation of what we mean by Afghan-led, Afghan-owned. So, if the Afghan delegation makes this a priority in their engagements with the Taliban, then that’s completely in keeping with Afghan ownership.”18
Karzai and Afghan officials were apoplectic. The United States asked Qatar to suspend the office and blamed the Qataris for this debacle.19 But a substantial burden falls on the Obama administration for poor coordination, ignoring warning signs, and abysmal communication.20 The next morning Karzai suspended talks on the BSA because of “inconsistent statements and actions in regard to the peace process.”21 The Taliban office opening had violated nearly every assurance given by Obama. Protests erupted in Kabul.22
The new SRAP, Ambassador Jim Dobbins, and an interagency team went to Kabul to try to assuage Karzai. The latter believed the fiasco was deliberate. “Unfortunately, the manner in which the office was announced, including the title given to the office and the imagery on display, were all in breach of the written assurances we received from the U.S. government,” a senior Afghan official explained to the Washington Post.23 “The bizarre turn of events following the opening of the Taleban office in Doha,” Afghan analysts Borhan Osman and Kate Clark reflected, “has led many [Afghans] to wonder whether the affair could have been deliberately sabotaged. Was it possible it had just been badly handled?”24
The fiasco had adverse consequences on the civil-military campaign, the transition, the BSA, and regional diplomacy—not to mention American credibility. “The reconciliation effort became too limited,” former Deputy SRAP Singh observed, “and was not fully connected to the strategy.”25