This is the eighth in a series of posts about Serial 2, a podcast focused on the war in Afghanistan. It centered around Bowe Bergdahl, and I wrote responses to the podcast for my first semester International Relations major-required course, Introduction to World Politics. We learned about the international state system, and challenges to international politics today.
In order to recover Bowe Bergdahl from Taliban forces on May 31, 2014, the United States had a complicated diplomatic mission. Aside from the arranging the logistics and trade of prisoners, the recovery was also placed in a broader regional context of peace talks, of possibly ending the war in Afghanistan, while having to contend with state sovereignty complicating a recovery of Bowe. It took five years of negotiations to bring Bowe back home, and by 2014, he was traded for five Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
In my Intro to World Politics class, we have learned that states operate and exist as sovereign nations. This means that states have supreme authority within their borders; states should be able to control what happens as opposed to external interveners. Because Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and other nations held stakes in Bowe’s recovery, and the stability of Afghanistan, recovery was a complicated process.
In 2009, President Obama’s administration’s military strategy, helmed by General Petraeus, against the Taliban was counterinsurgency. Only later was a political solution, and peace talks considered, at the urging of diplomat Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke believed that military should assist in reaching diplomatic agreements, not the other way around. The issue with military intervention and sovereignty is that it can violate state’s authority over their territories. Diplomacy generally takes place on neutral grounds. Bowe’s case was wrapped in this broader context of diplomatic relations in the Middle Eastern region and hinged on near perfect cooperation on every side.
Later, in 2010, the U.S. government met with a Taliban affiliate secretly, and for the first time, in Germany. The U.S. wanted the Taliban to work with the ruling Afghan Karzai government, to stop fighting, to break with al-Qaeda and to uphold the Afghan constitution, especially women’s and girl’s rights. The Taliban, in turn, wanted to be disaffiliated with al-Qaeda, to be taken off the U.N. terrorist list, to have prisoners returned and a political office established in Qatar. Also during the meeting, its decided that a ‘mutual release’ could trade Bowe for Taliban prisoners. And then, the orchestrator Holbrooke died.
In 2011, Hillary Clinton and the federal government make reconciliation the strategy in Taliban, including using ‘confidence-building measures,’ including Bowe as a ‘line item.’ Peace talks were being arranged in confidence, between the few Taliban who knew and supported the initiative, and higher ups in the U.S. government. However, Pakistan was not consulted in the peace talks; in order to recover Bowe, Afghanistan and Pakistan’s sovereignty would be affected in any attempts to recover him. It makes it difficult to recover Bowe if the nations where he is held, and where his captors live and move, are not involved in the peace talks process. But I can also see how more players at the negotiation table complicate negotiations, especially when it is the American objective to have Afghans speaking to Afghans about the future of their nation.
Later in 2011, the secretive talks were leaked and reported on by American and German news media. The Taliban walked away, and the U.S. was left to ask them back to the table and to smooth over relations with Pakistan. Because the process was outed, when the Taliban came back to the table, they had higher demands, including prisoner’s release, which is a lengthy congressional process, and the process had higher stakes with international pressure.
After listening to Episode 9, I found out that peace talks with the Taliban have hit setback after setback, and some have seemed especially calculated and intentional. For example, the leaks about the U.S.-Taliban peace talks; when the Afghanistan High Peace Council head and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated, right before international peace talks were set to begin in late 2011. Then in 2013, the Afghan government, the U.S., the Qataris and the Taliban are working to allow the Taliban to have a political office in Qatar. Then the Taliban violates the ground rules and labels the office as the ‘Islamic Emirate.’ Karzai is upset, and the Taliban feel humiliated over a misunderstanding. Talks halt again.
In all of this politicking between nations and non governmental actors, the thread of Bowe’s recovery gets lost. He is clearly no one’s priority. By 2014, the man in charge of holding Bowe for the majority of his captivity and the leader of the Taliban are killed, and the Pakistani Taliban are mobilizing against an upcoming Pakistani military attack. In 2014, the Taliban do not want peace talks, they want to swap for Bowe. He is an afterthought, the last thing that can be crossed off the list when the reconciliation idea falls through due to time passed and mismanagement.
I find it hard to believe that progress toward a stable Afghanistan can really be made when it has been so quickly and so often in the last fifteen years. But I also do not understand fully the cost of getting to the peace talks point, and the process by which states can reach a peace agreement. I think by 2014, the issue of sovereignty—the Taliban wanting to control the state, Pakistan with the Taliban and Bowe in their borders, the Afghan government controlling territory and cooperating with the U.S.—makes Bowe’s recovery possible, but impossible to factor as a talking point in diplomatic negotiations.
