It’s been widely reported that President Karzai has entered into top secret, covert, hush-hush talks with members of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami militia. The irony of widely reported secret talks is a bit of a head scratcher, but let’s come back to that in a moment. First we should look at the context in which these peace talks are taking place, what we can learn from the talks in our own push to end the war.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, you’ll remember, is our al-Qa’eda affiliated, mass-murdering, war criminal buddy from back in the 80′s. Bill Roggio fills us in on the details:

Hekmatyar is a notorious opportunist who has ties with al Qaeda, Iran, and Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment.

Hekmatyar was a key player in the Soviet-Afghan war and led one of the biggest insurgent factions against Soviet and Afghan communist forces. His brutal battlefield tactics and wanton destruction of Kabul following the collapse of the Afghan Communist regime in the early 1990s led to the demise of Hekmatyar’s popularity. The Taliban overran his last stronghold south of Kabul in 1995 and forced him into exile in Iran from 1996-2002.

HIG forces have conducted attacks in northern and northeastern Afghansitan, and have bases in Pakistan’s Swat Valley as well as in the tribal agencies of Bajaur, Mohmand, and North and South Waziristan.

Hekmatyar, along with the Haqqani Network and the Quetta Shura, are the top three insurgent groups in Afghanistan. All have close ties to al Qaeda and other jihadist groups based in Pakistan and Central Asia.

I won’t rehash the argument that dealing with such an evil bastard, through our own corrupt, drug dealer puppet Karzai no less, is a bad idea, particularly since our own envoy Richard Holbrooke sort of renders the corruption argument mute. Instead let’s give this band of criminals the benefit of the doubt, and just focus on the substance of the negotiations.

In 2007 we saw the start of this current round of negotiations. Not the first time Karzai has entered into these negotiations, mind you, but the first time we saw western leaders hint publicly that they might actually be open to negotiating a deal with the Taliban. The Independent reported this in December of that year:

"These are talks about talks," said one senior Nato official. "It might not be the beginning of the end, but it’s the end of the beginning. It’s not official. It’s representatives of representatives, like the role the Church played at the start of the Northern Ireland peace process." British diplomats are cautiously optimistic about the talks. They see negotiations as part of the solution. American officials fear the idea will be "radioactive" to voters back home.

A senior presidential aide said the Taliban was divided. He said: "They are tired of fighting. They want a better life. We need to find ways to guarantee they will be safe if they come back and there will be no revenge."

It is understood talks will continue "under the table" until the two sides can agree something to warrant a public announcement. "The Taliban want to take part in government," said Mullah Nazimi. "They want sharia law, and they want the withdrawal of international forces. But not at once."

The Taliban have also insisted the UN scraps its blacklist which requires member states to freeze the assets and restrict the movement of 142 former Taliban officials, including Mullah Omar, before negotiations officially start.

Basically, the Taliban had a few demands before they could begin to negotiate. They want to be part of the government, sharia law, withdrawal of international forces, and the removal of Taliban leaders from a UN blacklist. Did we give in on any of those demands?

Part of the government? Check.

…Flynn, the intelligence chief, went so far as to suggest that the insurgent leaders Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are both “absolutely salvageable.” “The [Hizb-i-Islami] already have members in Karzai’s government, and it could evolve into a political party, even though Hekmatyar may be providing alQaeda leaders refuge in Kunar.

Sharia law? Check.

A controversial bill that Afghan President Hamid Karzai promised to review before implementing quietly became law last month, allowing police to enforce language that stipulates a wife’s sexual duties and restricts a woman’s ability to leave her own home.

Withdrawal of foreign forces? Check.

President Obama announced Tuesday that he would speed 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in coming months, but he vowed to start bringing American forces home in the middle of 2011, saying the United States could not afford and should not have to shoulder an open-ended commitment.

Remove Taliban leaders from the UN blacklist? Check.

A statement on Tuesday said the panel had "approved the deletion of the five entries" from its blacklist of individuals subjected to a travel ban, assets freeze and arms embargo.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has been pushing for Taliban names to be removed from the list and was planning to raise the issue at a conference on Afghanistan in London on Thursday.

But have the Taliban given in to any of our demands, like severing ties with al-Qa’eda? Check.

Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper followed up the report in a Washington-datelined article which quotes a senior diplomatic source as confirming the LA Times assessment. “There is a sizeable shift away from al Qaeda,” it quotes its diplomatic source as saying. “Very few are left who still support Al Qaeda. The vast majority is distancing itself from them.”  The militants, he said, would ultimately be forced to give up fighting or be eradicated. “They have nowhere to go.”

Obviously, a lot of this is empty talk, rumors, and supposition. For one thing, President Obama is promising in Afghanistan the same thing Bush promised in Iraq; Sure, we’ll withdraw, right after we escalate. And we’re still in Iraq today. But we at least have some very public signals that all sides are willing to make concessions when it comes to peace talks.

Remember, we’re still dealing with despicable scumbags like Karzai and Hekmatyar, but all this conniving and deal-making has actually resulted in a fairly reasonable peace offer from the Taliban. Let’s look at the peace plan brought to the table by Hizb-i-Islami:

1. Foreign troops must start withdrawal in July this year and complete the process in six months.
2. They should quit main cities and populated areas and move to military bases.
3. Security issues must be completely handed over to Afghan army and the police. Foreign troops will have no rights to carry out military operations, house search and arrests on their own anywhere in Afghanistan.
4. The parliament and the incumbent government will continue to function unless new elections are held and new government is formed. But those people should not be part of the government who are controversial and accused of corruption, war crimes and who have secular ideas. And those people should not be in top military leadership who support a group against other.
5. A 7-member National Security Council will be formed with the consensus of all Afghan factions which will have the power to take final decisions on key issues. The Council’s center will be in a province where security will be completely under Afghan forces and there will be no foreign troops there.
6. After the withdrawal of foreign troops, elections for the office of the President, National Assembly and provincial assemblies will be held simultaneously on proportional representation basis in (Afghan year 1390 Spring). (March 2011)
7. Cabinet members and governors can only be allowed to take part in the elections who resign three months before the polls.
8. Every party will get representation in the first elected government in accordance with their seats in the parliament and they will secure trust vote from the parliament. And the largest group will not be bound to form coalition government.
9. That Group or Alliance will have the right to take part in coming election which will secure up to 10 per cent votes in the first election.
10. During this period there will be complete ceasefire among the warring factions, all political prisoners will be freed, all sides will make commitment that they will not fight against rival faction and they will not use illegal channels to grab power.
11. The first elected parliament will have the right to review the constitution and to take a final decision about the constitution.
12. No foreign country will have the right to establish their jails in Afghanistan. They will not arrest or put on trial any Afghan national and will not take any Afghan for trial outside of the country.
13. Those accused of war crimes, drug smuggling, corruption and plundering national wealth will be tried in Islamic courts. No side will defend them covertly or overtly.
14. Foreign fighters will not stay in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of foreign troops.
15. Any internal and external elements who are opposed to this agreement and insist on fighting, we all will jointly deal with the war mongers to save our homeland from their curse.

Pajhwok notes:

[A delegation team member] expected the talks to last a few months before a deal could be reached. ‎The government has so far made no public comment over the peace conditions and some of the points seem an unaffordable price for the incumbent administration and its backers.

What we have is a list of 15 points, not demands, that all sides can now negotiate on. Some of them will be an "unaffordable price" and thus struck from the final deal. Seems nuanced and reasonable, exactly what you’d expect from negotiations. Let’s look at our peace plan again:

Directs the President, pursuant to the War Powers Resolution, to remove the U.S. Armed Forces from Afghanistan:

1. by no later than 30 days after this resolution is adopted; or
2. if the President determines that it is not safe to remove them by such date, by no later than December 31, 2010, or such earlier date that the President determines that they can be safely removed.

Hmm, nothing about who handles security, government reconciliation, not even a call for fresh elections. Hekmatyar’s plan addresses those issues, why can’t ours? Our plan was pure, but unfortunately it only got 65 votes in the House, nowhere near enough to pass. But what else did it get? At least 225 members were willing to have the debate. That’s more than passed Health Care Reform, something else that took a lot of deal-cutting and negotiations.

In our case, you did the hard work by forcing your representatives to allow Kucinich’s resolution to get a vote. 225 members of congress were forced by you to come to the table and talk about the issues we all agree on: the cost of the war, the brutalized troops, the civilian casualties, the murky objective and even murkier timeline. Critically though, we failed to offer them even the same nuance as the Taliban offers Karzai. Even with all that congress agrees on, in the end we gave them a choice between complete withdrawal or nothing else.

To grow from 65 to 225, we don’t have to sacrifice any part of H.Con.Res 248, we only have to add to it. After all, the first two points of Hekmatyar’s peace plan are the same as ours. While Kucinich calls for an immediate withdrawal, or as soon as the troops "safely" can, Hekmatyar calls for an immediate withdrawal, or at least get out of the cities until you can leave for good. But he still has 13 other points, ours doesn’t.

I’m repeating myself, of course, but let’s go back to the top secret front page negotiations with Karzai and Hekmatyar’s group. Why are they publicizing it so much and leaking it to anybody with a paper and pencil if it’s supposed to be so covert and behind the scenes? That’s likely their insurance that nothing will go wrong with the negotiations. What could go wrong? Joshua Foust tells us:

This isn’t the first time American and Pakistani greed has undermined a peace process—as we’ve discussed previously, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the U.S. has a very reliable habit ever since 2004 or so of trying to murder any Pakistani Taliban leader who sits down at the negotiation table. The Pakistanis are hardly better—if you look at the “peace deals” and temporary truces drawn up in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008, in the beginning it was Pakistan or the U.S. who violated those cease-fires, not the Pakistani Taliban.

Even when we convinced our bitter enemies to come to the negotiating table in good faith, we tried to kill them. What Karzai and the Hizb-i-Islami delegation are doing is making it very clear what is happening and who is involved, so if they magically wind up in a Pakistani prison or blown to pieces by a hellfire missile, we’ll know the whole story.

These are the kind of folks we’re dealing with over there. Karzai and Hekmatyar are criminals, the Pakistanis are working against our interests, and even ISAF can’t be trusted to negotiate an end to hostilities because they’re too busy escalating it.

Our plan is better. We want to end it. We have the first two points, begin the withdrawal timeline as quickly as possible, so all we need to grow that 65 to 225 is a dozen or so more points to our peace plan. It doesn’t have to be anything more complicated than that to start the debate. Then we can negotiate on all the other points raised by the 225, the cost, casualties, governance, terrorism, etc. It’s working for Karzai and Hekmatyar, it worked to get Health Care Reform passed, and it can work for us to force an end to this war.

Let’s start with Hekmatyar’s 15 points above. We like #1 and #2, so what else? What, if anything, can we take from this peace plan and add to our own? What do we need to add to satisfy our own concerns about cost, casualties, and terrorism? Tell me below in the comments, we’ll start building a new plan today.

I am the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read my work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan.