Two different viewpoints, First Ben Barry, from IISS (London), he starts with:We often hear that the narrative is important:For peace to have a chance in Afghanistan, both the Afghan government and Taliban must feel confident that they can negotiate privately, and that the gap between their positions has narrowed sufficiently that they have some common ground on which to do deals.Link:http://www.iiss.org/en/iiss%20voices...n-endgame-474b There is a voice only podcast, one hour long too:https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=QTQxS9FzHjcBarry observed that an important ‘known unknown’ will be the extent to which the Taliban’s narrative – that they are fighting to expel infidels from Afghanistan – will retain its credibility once US and NATO troops increasingly withdraw from combat operations and tactical mentoring.
Secondly, ICSR (London) and the New America Foundation, have issued a paper, which comes to a different conclusion according to KoW review:Link to ICSR report, there is a podcast too:http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/...-TT-Report.pdfThe report is sceptical about the value of talking with the Taliban, at least in the manner in which negotiations have been approached to date. There are many reasons for the pessimism: the Taliban is not hierarchical, so there are few leaders who can ‘deliver the movement’; the talks critically do not include the Afghan government; too many actors are involved in the process, producing distortion and ambiguity; and whereas negotiations require lengthy commitments, NATO is rapidly running out of time. Most fundamentally, whereas talks require a ‘mutually hurting stalemate’, NATO does not have a strong enough hand militarily to achieve what they want at the negotiating table.
KoW review by David Ucko:http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2013/07/tal...w-icsr-report/
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