Confidence Key to Taliban Reintegration, Commander Says

08 September 2011

Taliban fighters surrender their weapons to Afghan officials in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on April 11, 2011.

The Afghan-led reintegration program for former Taliban fighters has enrolled nearly 10 percent of the group’s estimated force in the year since the program began, and a commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) says more are expected to participate as trust and confidence build between them and Afghan officials, as well as their desire to peacefully return to their homes after years of fighting.

Speaking to reporters in a September 8 teleconference from Kabul, Afghanistan, British Army Major General Phil Jones, who directs ISAF’s Force Reintegration Cell, said that nearly one year after Afghanistan’s High Peace Council met in October 2010 to launch the Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program, it has successfully established peace committees in 32 Afghan provinces and enrolled 2,418 former Taliban fighters in the reintegration program.

“These are 2,418 men who are no longer shooting at the coalition and Afghan soldiers, no longer laying roadside bombs that kill innocent women and children,” Jones said, and they account for roughly 10 percent of the estimated 25,000 active professional Taliban fighters and others who have been fighting the government for many years.

Jones said Afghanistan’s 30 years of conflict has resulted in wariness, skepticism and caution among its people for the program, and added the process is dependent on a steady increase of confidence among all sides.

“This requires courageous Afghan leaders to make bold decisions to reject the cycle of violence and work to build local and national peace. It requires huge energy to overcome the inertia of war, and great persistence to build the confidence and trust necessary to achieve momentum,” he said.

He said the program is gaining traction, and through their participation, both the fighters and the local communities are making “brave decisions” to reject the insurgency and violence despite facing continued threats and intimidation. “I have a great deal of respect for those that are doing this,” Jones said.

Jones said that even though reintegration is an Afghan-led and -designed process, ISAF has been supporting Afghan leaders in the creation and execution of the initiative.

“ISAF’s part in all of this is to work with all of our Afghan military and civil partners to bring increasing synergies between security, political outreach, governance, the rule of law and development,” he said. “We’re keen supporters, able and willing to do whatever we can to support the Afghan peace and reintegration program.”

U.S. FUNDING FOCUSES ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

The program includes a stipend of $120 per fighter per month for three months to help ease them back into their communities, but Jones said they are returning “as a consequence of peacebuilding, not as a result of material or financial incentives.”

He said the $142 million donated to the program by the United States and other countries is “almost exclusively focused on community development projects in response to peace.”

The fighters themselves “have the greatest incentive of all” to participate so they can “step off the battlefield with their honor and dignity intact and return to Afghanistan and live in peace,” he said.

“We try to give them some sense of security guarantees that if they join the peace process and remain in the peace process, they can live in peace at home,” Jones said.

He said that in their direct contacts with Taliban leaders, ISAF personnel have told them: “If you join the peace process, we will support you going back to your communities. We’ll work with your communities; we’ll work with the local Afghan security forces … [and] we’ll lift targeting off you.”

As an example, Jones mentioned Noor-ul-Aziz Agha, a significant local Taliban leader from Kandahar, who was successfully reintegrated five months ago and is now the minister of hajj and religious affairs in Kandahar.

“I think this is remarkable, and it sends a very strong message of inclusion,” he said. Through political stabilization and political inclusion, the security gains from a surge in U.S. troops announced by President Obama in December 2009 are being better consolidated. Those additional U.S. troops are now beginning to transition out of Afghanistan, with 33,000 troops set to depart by summer 2012.

Both the civilian surge and improvements in Afghan security capability as a result of the campaign are also helping the reintegration process by reshaping the mood of the Afghan people “from a profound gloom to people who are starting to grapple with a more orderly future and starting to grapple with a sense of transition, allowing them to achieve sovereignty in so many domains with a structured process around it,” he said.

Jones said the reintegration program constitutes a “key supporting element of transition” as ISAF forces prepare to turn over security for the whole country to the Afghan government by 2014.

“You don’t make peace between your friends; you make peace with your enemies,” he said. “We have to bring complicated and controversial … people together and set the example and move on from there.”