Richard Holbrooke was, at heart, a negotiator. In the 1990s, as he described in his fascinating book, To End a War, he bullied, threatened, cajoled, and drank whiskey with Slobodan Milošević—whatever it took to force the Serbian dictator into a smaller and smaller corner until he finally gave in. On one difficult day during the peace talks hosted by the United States in Dayton, Ohio, when Milošević was refusing to give an inch, Richard walked him through a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base full of warplanes, providing a visual reminder of American military power. The message was clear: Compromise or face the consequences. The whole effort was a dazzling display of diplomatic skill, and a war that had appeared hopelessly intractable ended.
Richard longed to do for Afghanistan what he had done for the Balkans: reconcile the parties and negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. He was aware how difficult that would be; he confided to his friends that this was the toughest assignment in a career full of “Mission: Impossible” moments. But as he told me from the start, he was convinced that it was worth trying to create the conditions for a peace process. If the Taliban could be persuaded or pressured to drop their ties with al Qaeda and reconcile with the government in Kabul, then peace would be possible and U.S. troops could safely come home. At the end of the day, despite all the influence and involvement of Pakistan, the United States, and others, this was not a war between nations; it was a war among Afghans to determine the future of their country. And as Richard once observed, “In every war of this sort, there is always a window for people who want to come in from the cold.”
History tells us that insurgencies rarely end with a surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. Instead they tend to run out of steam thanks to persistent diplomacy, steady improvements in quality of life for people on the ground, and unyielding perseverance by those who want peace.
In my early conversations with Holbrooke about the possibilities of a political resolution to the conflict, we discussed two ways of approaching the problem: bottom up or top down. The former was more straightforward. There was good reason to believe that many low-level Taliban fighters were not particularly ideological. They were farmers or villagers who joined the insurgency because it offered a steady income and respect in a country wracked by poverty and corruption. If they were offered amnesty and other incentives, some of these fighters might willingly come off the battlefield and reintegrate into civilian life, especially if they grew weary of absorbing increasing American military pressure. If significant numbers could be persuaded to do so, that would leave mostly the hardcore extremists to sustain the insurgency—a much more manageable challenge for the government in Kabul.
The top-down approach was more challenging but potentially more decisive. The leaders of the Taliban were religious fanatics who had been at war practically all their lives. They had close ties with al Qaeda, relations with Pakistani intelligence officers, and deep-seated opposition to the regime in Kabul. It was unlikely they could be persuaded to stop fighting. But with enough pressure, they might realize that armed opposition was futile and the only road back to any role in Afghan public life was through negotiations. Despite the degree of difficulty, Richard thought we should pursue both approaches simultaneously, and I agreed.
In March 2009 the Riedel strategy review endorsed a bottom-up reintegration effort, but it rejected the prospect of a top-down peace process. The Taliban leaders were “not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them,” it stated. Still, the review set out some core principles that would be important guides for either approach. To be reconciled, insurgents would have to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution. And reconciliation should not come at the expense of Afghanistan’s progress on gender equality and human rights or lead to a return of reactionary social policies.
That was a concern I felt passionately about, going all the way back to my time as First Lady and continuing through my Senate service. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, I worked with other women Senators to support First Lady Laura Bush’s U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council and other programs for Afghan women as they sought new rights and opportunities. When I became Secretary of State, I requested that all our development and political projects in Afghanistan take into account the needs and concerns of Afghan women. Creating opportunity for women was not just a moral issue; it was vital to Afghanistan’s economy and security. While life remained difficult for most Afghan women, we did see some encouraging results. In 2001 life expectancy for women in Afghanistan was just forty-four years. By 2012 it had jumped to sixty-two. Mortality rates for mothers, infants, and children younger than five all declined significantly. Nearly 120,000 Afghan girls graduated from high school in those years, fifteen thousand enrolled in universities, and nearly five hundred women joined university faculties. Those figures are astonishing when you consider that at the beginning of the 21st century, they were close to zero across the board.
Despite this progress, Afghan women faced constant threats to their security and status, and not just from the resurgent Taliban. In the spring of 2009, for example, President Karzai signed a terrible new law that dramatically restricted the rights of women belonging to the minority Shiite population, targeting an ethnic group called the Hazara, which had conservative cultural traditions. The law, which included provisions effectively legalizing marital rape and requiring Shiite women to seek permission from their husbands before leaving the house, blatantly violated the Afghan Constitution. Karzai had backed the measure as a way of shoring up support from hard-line Hazara leaders, which was, of course, no excuse. I was appalled, and I let Karzai know it.
I called Karzai three times over the course of two days to urge him to revoke the law. If the Constitution could be ignored and the rights of this minority rolled back, then nobody’s rights were secure, men’s or women’s. It would undermine his regime’s moral case against the Taliban. I knew how much personal relationships and respect mattered to Karzai, so I also made clear that this was important to me personally. I explained that if he allowed this outrageous law to stand, it would make it very hard for me to explain why American women, including my former colleagues in Congress, should continue supporting him. Now I was speaking the language he understood. Karzai agreed to put the law on hold and send it back to the Justice Ministry for review. Changes were eventually made. Though not enough, it was a step in the right direction. To keep faith with Karzai, I generally kept this kind of personal diplomacy quiet. I wanted him to know that we could talk—and argue—without it ending up in the newspapers.
Whenever I met with Afghan women, whether in Kabul or at international conferences around the world, they movingly told me how much they wanted to help build and lead their country, as well as their fears that their hard-earned gains would be sacrificed as U.S. troops departed or Karzai cut a deal with the Taliban. That would be a tragedy, not just for Afghan women but for the entire country. So in every conversation about reintegrating insurgents and reconciling with the Taliban, I was very clear that it would not be acceptable to trade away the rights of Afghan women to buy peace. That would be no peace at all.
I made the Riedel review’s criteria for reintegration—abandon violence, break with al Qaeda, support the Constitution—a mantra of my diplomacy. At our first major international conference on Afghanistan, in The Hague in March 2009, I spoke to the assembled delegates about splitting “the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who joined their ranks not out of conviction, but out of desperation.” At an international conference in London in January 2010, Japan agreed to commit $50 million to provide financial incentives to draw low-level fighters off the battlefield. I pledged that the United States would also provide substantial funding, and we convinced other countries to follow suit.
In an interview in London, I was asked if “it would be a surprise and maybe even disturbing” for Americans to hear that we were trying to reconcile with some insurgents even as the President was sending more U.S. troops to fight the very same Taliban. “You can’t have one without the other,” I responded. “A surge of military forces alone without any effort on the political side is not likely to succeed. . . . An effort to try to make peace with your enemies without the strength to back it up is not going to succeed. So, in fact, this is a combined strategy that makes a great deal of sense.” That had been my argument during the many debates in the White House Situation Room about the troop surge, and it was in keeping with my beliefs about smart power. But I recognized that even if this was a wise strategy, it might be hard to accept. So I added, “I think underlying your question is the concern of people who say, well, wait a minute, those are the bad guys. Why are we talking to them?” That was a fair question. But at this point we weren’t talking about reconciling with terrorist masterminds or the Taliban leaders who protected Osama bin Laden. I explained that all we were doing was trying to peel off nonideological insurgents who sided with the Taliban for the much-needed paycheck.
So far, at least, that was true—for us. For his part, Karzai followed up on his statements about reconciliation in his 2009 inaugural address by exploring direct talks with Taliban leaders. In the summer of 2010 he convened a traditional conference of tribal elders from across Afghanistan to back his efforts. Then he appointed a High Peace Council led by former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani to lead potential negotiations. (Tragically Rabbani was assassinated in September 2011 by a suicide bomber with explosives hidden in his turban. His son agreed to take his place on the council.)
One obstacle to these early Afghan efforts was opposition from elements within the Pakistani intelligence service, known as ISI. Elements in the ISI had a long-standing relationship with the Taliban, going back to the struggle against the Soviets in the 1980s. They continued to provide safe haven for insurgents inside Pakistan, and supported the insurgency in Afghanistan as a way to keep Kabul off balance and hedge against potential Indian influence there. The Pakistanis did not want to see Karzai reach a separate peace with the Taliban that did not take their interests into account. And that was just one of the complications Karzai faced. He also had to worry about opposition from his allies in the old Northern Alliance, many of whom were members of ethnic minorities such as Tajiks and Uzbeks and were suspicious that Karzai would sell them out to his fellow Pashtuns in the Taliban. It was becoming clear that lining up all these players and interests to forge a lasting peace was going to be like solving a Rubik’s Cube.
By the fall of 2010, Kabul was buzzing with reports of a new channel between Karzai and the Taliban leadership. Karzai’s lieutenants held a number of meetings with a contact who crossed the border from Pakistan and was provided safe passage by Coalition troops. At one point he was flown on a NATO airplane to Kabul to meet with Karzai himself. The man claimed to be Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, a high-ranking Taliban commander, and he said he was ready to deal. Some captured Taliban fighters reportedly were shown a photograph and confirmed his identity. This was an exciting prospect.
In October, at a NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium, Secretary Gates and I were asked about these reports. We both emphasized our support for exploring any credible reconciliation effort, but I cautioned, “There are a lot of different strains to it that may or may not be legitimate or borne out as producing any bona fide reconciliation.”
Unfortunately my skepticism was warranted. In Afghanistan the story was starting to crumble. Some Afghans who had known Mansour for years claimed that this negotiator looked nothing like him. In November the New York Times reported that the Afghan government had determined the man was an impostor and not a member of the Taliban leadership after all. The Times called it “an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel.” For Karzai, it was a bitter disappointment.
While the Afghans were going down one dead end after another, Holbrooke and his team, including the noted scholar Vali Nasr, were focused on Pakistan, which they believed was one of the keys to unlocking the whole puzzle. We needed to get the Pakistanis invested in the future of Afghanistan and convince them they had more to gain from peace than from continued conflict.
Richard latched on to a stalled “transit trade agreement” between Afghanistan and Pakistan that had been languishing unfinished since the 1960s. If completed, it would lower trade barriers and allow consumer goods and commodities to flow across a border most often used in recent years for troop movements and arms shipments. He reasoned that if Afghans and Pakistanis could trade together, maybe they could learn to work together to combat the militants who threatened them both. Increased commerce would boost the economy on both sides of the border and offer people alternatives to extremism and insurgency, not to mention giving each side more of a stake in the other’s success. He successfully pushed both countries to restart negotiations and resolve their outstanding differences.
In July 2010, I flew to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, to witness the formal signing. The Afghan and Pakistani Commerce Ministers sat next to each other, staring down at the thick green folders before them that contained the final agreement. Richard and I stood behind them, next to Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. We looked on as the men carefully signed the accord and then stood to shake hands. Everyone applauded this tangible step, hoping that it could end up representing a new mind-set as much as a new business deal.
This was the first building block of a vision we would come to call “the new Silk Road,” a network of expanded commercial and communications links that would bind together Afghanistan with its neighbors, giving them all a stake in promoting shared peace and security. Over the next few years the United States committed $70 million to significantly upgrade key roads between Afghanistan and Pakistan, including through the famous Khyber Pass. We also encouraged Pakistan to extend “most-favored nation” status to India, and India to liberalize barriers to Pakistani investment and financial flows, both of which are still moving forward. Given the distrust that exists between them, getting anything done on the Pakistan-India front was no easy task. Electricity from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan began powering Afghan businesses. Trains started running on a new rail line from the Uzbek border to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Plans progressed for a pipeline that one day could ship billions of dollars’ worth of natural gas from energy-rich Central Asia across Afghanistan to energy-hungry South Asia. All these improvements were long-term investments in a more peaceful and prosperous future for a region too long held back by conflict and rivalry. It was slow going, to be sure, but even in the short term this vision injected a sense of optimism and progress in places where they were sorely needed.
In Islamabad, on that trip in July 2010 (and on every other visit there), I pushed hard to get Pakistan’s leaders to view the war in Afghanistan as a shared responsibility. We needed their help in closing the safe havens from which Taliban insurgents were staging deadly attacks across the border. As Richard kept emphasizing, there was never going to be a diplomatic solution to the conflict without Pakistani support. In a television interview with five Pakistani television journalists set up in our Ambassador’s home—part of my plan to be treated like a punching bag by the hostile Pakistani press to show how serious I was about engagement—I was asked whether it was possible to pursue such a settlement while still pounding away at the other side on the battlefield. “There is no contradiction between trying to defeat those who are determined to fight and opening the door to those who are willing to reintegrate and reconcile,” I replied.
In fact Richard and I still harbored hope that top Taliban leaders might one day be willing to negotiate. And there were some intriguing developments. In the fall of 2009, Richard visited Cairo and was told by senior Egyptian officials that a number of Taliban representatives, including an aide to the top leader, Mullah Omar, had recently paid them a visit. In early 2010, a German diplomat reported that he had also met with the same aide, this time in the Persian Gulf, and that he seemed to have a direct line to the elusive Taliban chief. Most interesting of all, he reportedly wanted to find a way to talk to us directly.
Richard thought this was an opening that needed to be tested, but some of our colleagues at the Pentagon, CIA, and White House were reluctant. Many agreed with the analysis in the Riedel review that the top leaders of the Taliban were extremists who could never be reconciled with the government in Kabul. Others thought the time was not yet ripe for negotiations. The surge had just begun, and it needed time to work. Some did not want to accept the political risk of engaging so directly with an adversary responsible for killing American soldiers. I understood this skepticism, but I told Richard to quietly explore what was possible.
A die-hard baseball fan, Richard started calling the Taliban contact, who was later identified by media reports as Syed Tayyab Agha, by the code name “A-Rod,” and it stuck. The Germans and Egyptians both said he was the real deal, a representative empowered to speak for Mullah Omar and the Taliban high command. The Norwegians, who had contacts within the Taliban, agreed. We weren’t sure, especially after other potential channels had turned out to be duds, but felt it was worth proceeding cautiously.
In the fall, even as the Afghan government was spinning its wheels with the Taliban impostor, we moved forward with a first exploratory meeting in Germany under the strictest secrecy. On a Sunday afternoon in October, Richard called his Deputy Frank Ruggiero, who had served as a civilian advisor with the military in Kandahar, and asked him to prepare to go to Munich to meet A-Rod. Ruggiero was in the car with his seven-year-old daughter, driving across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. Richard told him to remember the moment because we might be about to make history. (That was classic Holbrooke, with his irrepressible flair for the dramatic. He saw himself as wrestling with history and always believed he could win.)
The day after Thanksgiving Richard gave Ruggiero his final instructions. “The most important objective of the first meeting is to have a second meeting,” he said. “Be diplomatic, clearly lay out the redlines authorized by the Secretary, and keep them negotiating. The Secretary is following this closely, so call me as soon as you walk out of the meeting.” The redlines were the same conditions I had been repeating for more than a year: If the Taliban wanted to come in from the cold, they would need to stop fighting, break with al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution, including its protections for women. Those terms were nonnegotiable. But beyond that, as I told Richard, I was open to creative diplomacy that could move us toward peace.
Two days later Ruggiero and Jeff Hayes from the National Security Council staff at the White House arrived at a house arranged by the Germans in a village outside of Munich. Michael Steiner, the German Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was the host. A-Rod was young, in his late thirties, but he had worked for Mullah Omar for more than a decade. He spoke English and, unlike many Taliban leaders, had some experience with international diplomacy. The participants all agreed on the need to maintain absolute secrecy. There could be no leaks; if the Pakistanis found out about this meeting, they might undermine the talks just as they had Karzai’s early efforts.
The group talked for six intense hours, feeling one another out and stepping carefully around the massive issues on the table. Could sworn enemies actually come to some kind of understanding that would end a war and rebuild a shattered country? After so many years of fighting, it was hard enough to sit together and talk face-to-face, let alone trust one another. Ruggiero explained our conditions. The Taliban’s top concern seemed to be the fate of its fighters being held at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons. In every discussion about prisoners, we demanded the release of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who had been captured in June 2009. There would not be any agreement about prisoners without the sergeant coming home.
The next day Richard drove out to Dulles Airport to meet Ruggiero’s plane. He couldn’t wait to get a firsthand report, which he would then relay to me. The two sat down at Harry’s Tap Room in the airport, and Ruggiero talked while Richard tore into a cheeseburger.
A few days after Ruggiero’s return from Munich, on December 11, 2010, he and Richard came up to my office on the seventh floor of the State Department to meet with Jake Sullivan and me about how to proceed. We were also in the final stages of the one-year policy review that President Obama had promised when he approved the troop surge. No one would say that things were going well in Afghanistan, but there was some encouraging progress to report. The extra troops were helping blunt the Taliban’s momentum. Security was improving in Kabul and in key provinces like Helmand and Kandahar. Our development efforts were starting to make a difference in the economy, and our diplomacy with the region and the international community was picking up steam.
In November I had gone with President Obama to a summit of NATO leaders in Lisbon, Portugal. The summit reaffirmed the shared mission in Afghanistan and agreed to a trajectory for transitioning responsibility for security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014, along with an enduring NATO commitment to the country’s security and stability. Most important, the summit sent a strong message that the international community was united behind the strategy President Obama had announced at West Point. The increase in American forces, supplemented by those from our NATO and Coalition partners, was helping create conditions for political and economic transitions, as well as a security handoff and the basis for a diplomatic offensive. There was a clear road map for the end of U.S. combat operations and the continuing support that we knew would be necessary for Afghan democracy to survive. Now we had a secret channel to the Taliban leadership that appeared genuine and might one day lead to real peace talks among Afghans. (My spokeswoman Toria Nuland, with her talent for quotable lines, started short-handing our three mutually reinforcing lines of effort as “Fight, talk, build,” which I thought summed it up nicely.)
Richard was excited about our momentum coming out of Lisbon, and throughout the policy review process he repeatedly made his case to all who would listen that diplomacy needed to be a central element of our strategy going forward. On December 11, he was late to the meeting in my office, explaining that he had been tied up first with the Pakistani Ambassador and then at the White House. As usual, he was full of ideas and opinions. But as we talked, he grew quiet and his face suddenly turned an alarming bright red. “Richard, what’s the matter?” I asked. I knew immediately it was serious. He looked back at me and said, “Something horrible is happening.” He was in such physical distress that I insisted he go see the State Department medical staff, located on the building’s lower level. Reluctantly he agreed, and Jake, Frank, and Claire Coleman, my executive assistant, helped him get there.
The medical staff quickly sent Richard to nearby George Washington University Hospital. He took the elevator down to the garage and got into an ambulance for the short drive. Dan Feldman, one of Richard’s closest aides, rode over with him. When they got to the emergency room, doctors found a tear in his aorta and sent him directly to surgery, which lasted twenty-one hours. The damage was severe and his prognosis was not good, but Richard’s doctors would not give up.
I was at the hospital when the surgery ended. The doctors were “cautiously optimistic” and said that the next few hours would be crucial. Richard’s wife, Kati, their children, and his many friends were keeping vigil at the hospital. His State Department team volunteered to take shifts in the lobby to help manage the flow of visitors and run interference for Kati. Even as the hours stretched on, none of them would leave the hospital. The Operations Center was fielding lots of incoming calls from foreign leaders concerned about Richard. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was particularly anxious to speak to Kati to express his concern. He reported that people all over Pakistan were praying for her husband.
The next morning, with Richard still clinging to life, the doctors decided another surgery was necessary to try to stop the continued bleeding. We were all praying. I was staying close to the hospital, as were so many others who loved Richard. Around 11 A.M. President Karzai telephoned from Kabul and spoke to Kati. “Please tell your husband that we need him back in Afghanistan,” he said. As they talked, Kati’s call waiting chimed. It was President Zardari, who promised to call right back. Richard would have been delighted that so many illustrious people were spending hour after hour talking about nothing but him. He would hate to have missed it.
By late afternoon Richard’s surgeon, who by coincidence was from Lahore, Pakistan, reported that Richard was “inching in the right direction,” although he remained in critical condition. The doctors were impressed by his resilience and marveled at the fight he was putting up. For those of us who knew and loved him, that was no surprise at all.
By Monday afternoon, with the situation much the same, Kati and the family decided to join me and President Obama at the State Department for a long-scheduled holiday reception for the diplomatic corps. I welcomed everyone to the Benjamin Franklin Room on the eighth floor and began with a few words about our friend, who was fighting for his life only a few blocks away. I said that the doctors were “learning what diplomats and dictators around the world have long known: There’s nobody tougher than Richard Holbrooke.”
Just a few hours later things took a turn for the worse. Around 8 P.M. on December 13, 2010, Richard Holbrooke died. He was just sixty-nine years old. His doctors were visibly upset that they had not been able to save his life, but remarked that Richard had entered the hospital with uncommon dignity for someone who had suffered such a traumatic event. I visited quietly with the family—Kati; Richard’s sons, David and Anthony; his stepchildren, Elizabeth and Chris; and his daughter-in-law, Sarah—and then went to be with the crowd of friends and colleagues downstairs. Teary-eyed people held hands and talked about the need to celebrate Richard’s life, while also continuing the work to which he was so devoted.
I read aloud to those gathered the formal statement I had just issued: “Tonight America has lost one of its fiercest champions and most dedicated public servants. Richard Holbrooke served the country he loved for nearly half a century, representing the United States in far-flung war zones and high-level peace talks, always with distinctive brilliance and unmatched determination. He was one of a kind—a true statesman—and that makes his passing all the more painful.” I thanked the medical staff and everyone who had offered their prayers and support over the past few days. “True to form, Richard was a fighter to the end. His doctors marveled at his strength and his willpower, but to his friends, that was just Richard being Richard.”
Everyone started swapping their favorite Richard stories and reminiscing about this remarkable man. After a while, in a move I think Richard would have approved of, a large group of us headed over to the bar of the nearby Ritz-Carlton Hotel. For the next few hours we held an impromptu wake and celebration of Richard’s life. Everyone had great stories to tell, and we laughed and cried in equal measure, sometimes all at once. Richard had trained an entire generation of diplomats, and many of them spoke movingly about what having him as a mentor meant to their lives and careers. Dan Feldman shared with us that on the way to the hospital, Richard had said that he considered his team at the State Department “the best he had ever worked with.”
In mid-January, Richard’s many friends and colleagues from across the world gathered at the Kennedy Center in Washington for a memorial service. Among the eulogists were President Obama and my husband. I spoke last. Looking out at the large crowd, a testament to Richard’s genius for friendship, I was reminded how keenly I would miss having him by my side. “There are few people in any time, but certainly in our time, who can say, I stopped a war. I made peace. I saved lives. I helped countries heal. Richard Holbrooke did these things,” I said. “This is a loss personally and it is a loss for our country. We face huge tasks ahead of us, and it would be better if Richard were here, driving us all crazy about what we needed to be doing.”
I couldn’t let Richard’s death derail the work to which he was so committed. His team felt the same way. We had been discussing the idea of a major speech on the prospects for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. I was sure Richard would want us to go ahead with it. So we put aside our grief and got to work.
I asked Frank Ruggiero to serve as acting Special Representative and sent him to Kabul and Islamabad in the first week of January 2011 to brief Karzai and Zardari on what I was planning to say. I was about to put a lot of weight and momentum behind the idea of reconciliation with the Taliban, and we wanted them to be prepared. Karzai was in equal measure engaged, encouraging, and suspicious. “What are you really discussing with those Taliban?” he asked. Just like the Pakistanis, he was worried that we would cut a deal without him that might leave him exposed.
While I worked on the speech with the team in Washington, Ruggiero headed to Qatar for a second meeting with A-Rod, our Taliban contact. We still had concerns about his legitimacy and ability to deliver results, so Ruggiero proposed a test. He asked A-Rod to have the Taliban propaganda arm release a statement with some specific language in it. If they did, we’d know he had real access. In return Ruggiero told A-Rod that in my upcoming speech, I would open the door to reconciliation with stronger language than any American official had yet used. A-Rod agreed and promised to send the message back to his superiors. Later the statement came out with the promised language.
Before I finalized my speech, I needed to decide on a permanent successor to Holbrooke. It would be impossible to fill his shoes, but we needed another senior diplomat to lead his team and carry the effort forward. I turned to a widely respected retired Ambassador, Marc Grossman, whom I had met when he served in Turkey. Marc is quiet and self-effacing, a dramatic departure from his predecessor, but he brought uncommon skill and subtlety to the job.
In mid-February I flew to New York and went to the Asia Society, where Richard had once served as chairman of the board, to deliver a memorial lecture in his name, which would in time become an annual tradition. I began by providing an update on the military and civilian surges that President Obama had announced at West Point. Then I explained that we were conducting a third surge, a diplomatic one, aimed at moving the conflict toward a political outcome that would shatter the alliance between the Taliban and al Qaeda, end the insurgency, and help produce a more stable Afghanistan and a more stable region. This had been our vision from the beginning, and it was what I had argued for in President Obama’s strategic review process in 2009. Now it was moving front and center.
To understand our strategy, it was important for Americans to be clear about the difference between the al Qaeda terrorists, who attacked us on 9/11, and the Taliban, who were Afghan extremists waging an insurgency against the government in Kabul. The Taliban had paid a heavy price for their decision in 2001 to defy the international community and protect al Qaeda. Now the escalating pressure from our military campaign was forcing them to make a similar decision. If the Taliban met our three criteria, they could rejoin Afghan society. “This is the price for reaching a political resolution and bringing an end to the military actions that are targeting their leadership and decimating their ranks,” I said, including a subtle but important shift in language, describing these steps as “necessary outcomes” of any negotiation rather than “preconditions.” It was a nuanced change, but it would clear the way for direct talks.
I acknowledged, as I had many times before, that opening the door to negotiations with the Taliban would be hard to swallow for many Americans after so many years of war. Reintegrating low-level fighters was odious enough; negotiating directly with top commanders was something else entirely. But diplomacy would be easy if we had to talk only to our friends. That’s not how peace is made. Presidents throughout the Cold War understood that when they negotiated arms control agreements with the Soviets. As President Kennedy put it, “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Richard Holbrooke had made this his life’s work, negotiating with an ugly tyrant like Milošević because that was the best way to end a war.
I closed the speech by urging Pakistan, India, and other nations in the region to support a process of peace and reconciliation that would isolate al Qaeda and give everyone a new sense of security. If Afghanistan’s neighbors kept viewing Afghanistan as an arena for playing out their own rivalries, peace would never succeed. It was going to take a lot of painstaking diplomacy, but we needed to play an inside game with the Afghans and an outside game with the region.
The speech made a few headlines at home, but its real impact was in foreign capitals, especially Kabul and Islamabad. All sides now knew we were serious about pursuing a peace process with the Taliban. One diplomat in Kabul described the effect as a “seismic shift” that would encourage all sides to more actively pursue peace.
The successful U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011, was a major victory in the battle against al Qaeda and another low point in our already badly strained relationship with Pakistan. But I thought it might also provide us some new leverage with the Taliban. Five days after the raid, Ruggiero met for a third time with A-Rod, this time back in Munich. I told him to pass along a direct message from me: bin Laden was dead; this was the time for the Taliban to break from al Qaeda once and for all, save themselves, and make peace. A-Rod did not seem distressed about losing bin Laden, and he remained interested in negotiating with us.
We began discussing confidence-building measures that both sides could take. We wanted the Taliban to make public statements disassociating themselves from al Qaeda and international terrorism and committing to participate in a peace process with Karzai and his government. The Taliban wanted to be allowed to open a political office in Qatar that would provide a safe place for future negotiations and engagement. We were open to this idea, but it raised a number of challenges. Many Taliban leaders were considered terrorists by the international community and could not appear in the open without facing legal jeopardy. Pakistan also had to agree to allow them to come and go openly. And there was a good chance Karzai would see a Taliban outpost in Qatar as a direct threat to his legitimacy and authority. All these concerns seemed manageable, but they would require careful diplomacy.
As a first step, we agreed to begin working with the United Nations to remove a few key Taliban members from the terrorist sanctions list, which imposed a travel ban. Soon the UN Security Council agreed to split the Taliban and al Qaeda lists and treat them separately—a direct manifestation of the distinction drawn in my speech—which gave us considerably more flexibility. The Taliban still wanted their fighters released from Guantánamo, but that was not a step we were willing to take yet.
In mid-May Afghan officials in Kabul leaked word of our secret talks and named Agha as our Taliban contact to the Washington Post and Der Spiegel, a German newsweekly. Privately the Taliban understood that the leak was not from us, but publicly they expressed outrage and suspended future talks. Pakistani authorities, already outraged over the bin Laden raid, were livid that they had been left out of our discussions with the Taliban. We had to scramble to pick up the pieces. I went to Islamabad and talked to the Pakistanis for the first time about the extent of our contacts and requested that there be no retribution against A-Rod. I also asked Ruggiero to fly to Doha and pass a message through the Qataris to the Taliban urging them to return to the table. In early July the Qataris reported that Agha was willing to return.
Talks resumed in Doha in August. A-Rod presented Ruggiero with a letter for President Obama that he said was from Mullah Omar himself. There was some debate inside the administration about whether Mullah Omar was still alive, let alone in charge of the Taliban and directing the insurgency. But whether it was from Omar or from other senior leaders, its tone and content were encouraging. The letter said that now was the time for both sides to make tough choices on reconciliation and work to end the war.
There were constructive discussions about an office in Doha and possible prisoner swaps. Marc Grossman joined the talks for the first time, and his personal touch helped move things along.
In October, on a visit to Kabul, Karzai told me and our highly regarded and experienced Ambassador Ryan Crocker, with whom he had a good relationship, that he was enthusiastic about what we were doing. “Go faster,” he said. In Washington serious discussions began about the viability of limited prisoner releases, although the Pentagon was not supportive and I was unsure whether we could secure the conditions necessary to agree to a Taliban office in Qatar. By late fall, however, the pieces seemed finally in place. A major international conference on Afghanistan was scheduled to take place in Bonn, Germany, in the first week of December. Our goal was to announce the opening of the office following the conference. It would be the most tangible sign yet that a real peace process was under way.
Bonn was part of the diplomatic offensive I had described in my Asia Society speech, aimed at mobilizing the broader international community to help Afghanistan take responsibility for meeting its many challenges. Grossman and his team helped organize a series of summits and conferences in Istanbul, Bonn, Kabul, Chicago, and Tokyo. In Tokyo, in 2012, the international community committed $16 billion in economic assistance through 2015 to help Afghanistan prepare for a “decade of transformation” marked less by aid and more by trade. Starting in 2015, estimated financing for the Afghan National Security Forces would be more than $4 billion per year. The Afghans’ ability to take responsibility for their own security was and remains a prerequisite for everything else they hope to achieve in the future.
The Bonn conference in December 2011 turned into a disaster for our peace efforts. Karzai, ever unpredictable, turned against the idea of a Taliban office, berating Grossman and Crocker. “Why have you not kept me informed of these talks?” he demanded, despite the fact that just a few months earlier he had urged us to accelerate them. Karzai was once again afraid of being left behind and undercut. Our plan had always been for these U.S.-Taliban talks to lead to parallel negotiations between the Afghan government and the insurgents. That was the sequence we had agreed to with A-Rod and discussed with Karzai. But now Karzai insisted he wanted his own people in the room for any future meetings between the Taliban and us. A-Rod balked when Grossman and Ruggiero broached this proposal. From his perspective, we were changing the rules of the game. In January 2012 the Taliban once again pulled out of our talks.
This time it was not so easy to coax them back. The peace process went into a deep freeze. Still, based on various public statements throughout 2012, there appeared to be a renewed debate under way within the ranks of the Taliban over the benefits of talking versus fighting. Some key figures publicly accepted that a negotiated solution was inevitable, reversing nearly a decade of rejection. Others, however, were committed to violent opposition. At the end of 2012 the door to reconciliation remained open, but only part way.
In January 2013, just before I left office, I invited President Karzai to have dinner with me, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and a few other senior officials at the State Department in Washington. Karzai brought along the chair of his High Peace Council and other key advisors. We gathered in the James Monroe Room on the eighth floor, surrounded by antiques from the early days of the American republic, and talked about the future of Afghanistan’s democracy.
It had been more than three years since Karzai and I had dined on the eve of his inauguration. Now I was about to hand the reins of the State Department over to Senator Kerry, and another Afghan election would soon select Karzai’s successor, or at least that was the plan. Karzai had publicly pledged to abide by the Constitution and leave office in 2014, but many Afghans wondered if he would actually follow through on that promise. The peaceful transfer of power from one ruler to the next is a crucial test of any democracy, and it is not unusual in that part of the world (and many others) for leaders to find ways to extend their tenure.
In a long one-on-one meeting before dinner, I urged Karzai to keep his word. If the government in Kabul could build more credibility with its citizens, deliver services, and administer justice fairly and effectively, it would help undercut the appeal of insurgency and improve the prospects for national reconciliation. That depended on all government officials, but especially Karzai, to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. Presiding over a constitutional transition would be an opportunity for Karzai to cement his legacy as the father of a more peaceful, secure, and democratic Afghanistan.
I recognized how difficult this might be for him. The Rotunda of the Capitol Building in Washington is home to a series of soaring patriotic paintings that depict proud moments from our own democracy’s early days, from the voyage of the Pilgrims to the victory at Yorktown. There is one painting in particular that I have always thought spoke to the democratic spirit of our country. It shows General Washington turning his back on the offered throne and giving up his commission as commander in chief of the Army. He went on to serve two terms as a civilian President and then voluntarily stepped down. More than any election victory or inaugural parade, that selfless act was the hallmark of our democracy. If Karzai wanted to be remembered as Afghanistan’s George Washington, he had to follow this example and give up the throne.
The other topic I raised with Karzai was the stalled peace process with the Taliban. Karzai had effectively pulled the plug in late 2011; I wanted him to reconsider. If we waited until after U.S. troops started coming home, we and he would have less leverage with the Taliban. Better to negotiate from a position of strength.
Over dinner Karzai ran through a litany of familiar concerns: How would we verify if Taliban negotiators actually spoke for the leadership? Would Pakistan be pulling the strings from Islamabad? Would Americans or Afghans lead the talks? One by one I answered his questions. I tried to impart the sense of urgency I felt to get the process moving again and suggested a plan that did not require him to directly reach an agreement with the Taliban on opening the office. All he had to do, I said, was make a public statement supporting the idea. I would then arrange for the Emir of Qatar to invite the Taliban to move forward. The goal would be to open the office and organize a meeting between the Afghan High Peace Council and representatives of the Taliban within thirty days. If that failed to happen, the office would be closed. After much discussion, Karzai agreed.
In June 2013, a few months after I left the State Department, the Taliban negotiating office finally opened. But the new understanding, which had taken years to reach, collapsed in little more than a month. The Taliban staged a flag-raising ceremony at the office and proclaimed that it represented the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the official name of the country in the 1990s when the Taliban were in power. We had been clear from the beginning that using the office in this way would be unacceptable. Our objective had always been to strengthen the constitutional order in Afghanistan and, as I had assured Karzai, we were vested in the sovereignty and unity of the country. Understandably, Karzai was apoplectic. To him it looked more like the headquarters of a government-in-exile than a negotiating venue. It was everything he had always feared. The Taliban refused to back down, relations ruptured, and the office was forced to close.
Watching all this now as a private citizen, I am disappointed but not surprised. If making peace were easy, it would have been done long ago. We knew the secret channel with the Taliban was a long shot, with failure more likely than success. But it was worth testing. I believe that we laid a positive foundation that might help future peace efforts. There are now a range of contacts between Afghans and the Taliban, and we exposed debates inside the Taliban that I suspect will only intensify over time. The need for reconciliation and a political settlement isn’t going away. If anything, it is more pressing than ever. The benchmarks we put down could still guide the way.
I wondered what Richard would have thought. Up until the end, he never lost his confidence in the power of diplomacy to untangle even the toughest knots. I wish he were still with us, twisting arms and slapping backs and reminding everyone that the way to start ending a war is to begin talking.