Smoke rises from the Intercontinental hotel as a NATO helicopter flies overhead, in Kabul June 29, 2011.Omar Sobhani/Reuters
The daring nighttime raid on one of one Kabul's best-known hotels by Afghan militants on Tuesday underlines once again how much depends on the secret talks with the Taliban. Following Barack Obama's plan for a limited withdrawal of troops, hopes of a settlement that would allow a full and safe Western troop withdrawal by 2014 depend on these negotiations.
However, the recent leaks by government officials in Washington, Kabul and London are extremely dangerous and could scuttle the talks just as they enter a critical phase. I have followed in detail the many attempts at Afghan dialogue since 2005, hoping they would bring peace to a country that has known only war since 1978. These talks have largely been between President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban and only recently included Americans.
At stake is not just peace for Afghanistan but the region, including a deeply precarious Pakistan. The talks are premised on the realization that neither a successful Western withdrawal nor a transition to Afghan forces can occur without an end to the civil war and a settlement between the government and the Taliban, but also Pakistan, the United States and the region.
The first face-to-face meeting between Taliban leaders and U.S. government officials took place in a village outside Munich on Nov. 28, 2010. It was chaired by a German diplomat. There were also Qatari officials whom the Taliban had asked to be involved. The talks lasted 11 hours.
The second round took place in Doha, the Qatari capital, on Feb. 15. Three days later Hillary Clinton, U.S. secretary of state, made the most far-reaching U.S. public statement to date, saying: "We are launching a diplomatic surge to move this conflict toward a political outcome that shatters the alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, ends the insurgency and helps to produce not only a more stable Afghanistan but a more stable region." The third meeting took place again in Germany on May 7 and 8. All the same participants have taken part in the three rounds which have largely involved trying to develop confidence-building measures between the Taliban and the Americans, such as lifting sanctions from the Taliban, the freeing of Taliban prisoners and the opening of a Taliban representative office.
On June 17, in a big step forward, the UN Security Council accepted a U.S. request to treat al-Qaeda and the Taliban separately on a 13-year-old UN list of global terrorists. There will now be two separate lists and UN sanctions on al-Qaeda members will not necessarily apply to the Taliban, making it easier to take them off the list - a significant boost to the dialogue.
Mr. Karzai has been fully briefed after each round and has unstintingly supported the Taliban's desire to hold separate talks with the Americans, even as his government continues its talks with the Taliban. Pakistani leaders have also been briefed about the talks, but have expressed reservations about them.
One U.S.-German target is to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2001 Bonn meeting that set up the Afghan interim government with another meeting in Bonn, in which the Taliban will participate. This would formalize the process, but there is still a long way to go before the Taliban agree to this demand - all the more reason that the identities of interlocutors are kept secret. Even so, some believe that the Americans are going about the talks too slowly.
The process began when German officials, at the request of the Taliban, held their first meeting in September, 2009, in Dubai. Germany has always been admired by the Afghans because it has stayed neutral - never taking sides in Afghan conflicts and even tried to mediate to end the 1990s civil war between the Taliban and opponents.
The Germans made sure the interlocutors represented the Taliban Shura (its governing council), which is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar. (The Americans have also taken pains to verify the authenticity of the Taliban.) The Germans held eight further meetings with the Taliban to build trust, before bringing in the Americans. The Germans have never doubted their role as facilitators - while the actual negotiations must take place between the United States and the Taliban.
Qatar has played a role because the Taliban wanted a Muslim country at the table and considered Qatar neutral. Qatar has never backed any of the regional countries that have taken sides in past Afghan conflicts, such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey or Iran. One hopes the next big steps would involve how both sides could reduce violence on the battlefield. At some stage the Taliban would have to admit talks are taking place, which they strongly deny at present.
A former Taliban leader told me recently: "The fundamental problem is between the U.S. and the Taliban and we consider the Afghan government as the secondary problem." He added: "The talks we want must involve the international community and end with international guarantees." If that is the case and the Taliban would like to see an orderly Western exit, the media and governments must allow these talks to succeed. The only way to do that is to respect the participants' need for secrecy.
Particularly dangerous has been the speculative naming by journalists of participants, endangering their lives at the hands of groups such as al-Qaeda, who want to sabotage the talks. Afghan efforts have always been undermined by governments in the region or extremists. These talks are clearly no longer secret but their contents must stay private if the talks are to have any chance.
Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore who is the author of several books including Descent into Chaos and The Taliban.