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U.S. Mulls Talks With Taliban in Bid to Quell Afghan Unrest

Gen. Petraeus Backs Effort to Win Over Some Elements of Group

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN, SIOBHAN GORMAN and JAY SOLOMON

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is actively considering talks with elements of the Taliban, the armed Islamist group that once ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al Qaeda, in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.

U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Debose, 26, stands among village elders as Afghan and American forces search for weapons Oct. 25 in the Korengal Valley of Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan.

Senior White House and military officials believe that engaging some levels of the Taliban -- while excluding top leaders -- could help reverse a pronounced downward spiral in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Both countries have been destabilized by a recent wave of violence.

The outreach is a draft recommendation in a classified White House assessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, according to senior Bush administration officials. The officials said that the recommendation calls for the talks to be led by the Afghan central government, but with the active participation of the U.S.

The idea is supported by Gen. David Petraeus, who will assume responsibility this week for U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Petraeus used a similar approach in Iraq, where a U.S. push to enlist Sunni tribes in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq helped sharply reduce the country's violence. Gen. Petraeus earlier this month publicly endorsed talks with less extreme Taliban elements.
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The final White House recommendations, which could differ from the draft, are not expected until after next month's elections. The next administration wouldn't be compelled to implement them. But the support of Gen. Petraeus, the highly regarded incoming head of the U.S. Central Command, could help ensure that the policy is put in place regardless of who wins next month's elections.

The proposed policy appears to strike rare common ground with both presidential candidates. Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama has said he thinks talks with the Taliban should be considered and has advocated shifting more military forces to Afghanistan. Republican contender Sen. John McCain supports, as part of his strategy, reaching out to tribal leaders in an effort to separate "the reconcilable elements of the insurgency from the irreconcilable elements of the insurgency," Randy Scheunemann, the campaign's top foreign-policy adviser, said Monday.

The U.S. policy review is taking place against the backdrop of ongoing talks between Taliban sympathizers and Afghan government officials. The negotiations, which have been held in recent weeks in Saudi Arabia and moderated by Saudi officials, have primarily involved former Taliban members who have since left the armed group. But a U.S. official said some of the discussions have included current Taliban members and others with close ties to the group's leadership.
Mutual Distrust

U.S. talks would have to overcome years of mutual distrust, a U.S. policy that has favored arrest rather than outreach, and some doubts over whether participants on the Taliban side would be credible. But the possibility of U.S. talks with Taliban officials comes amid a wholesale restructuring of American policy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The U.S. has endorsed a Pakistani move to arm thousands of anti-Taliban fighters along the country's porous border with Afghanistan, and senior American officials say they are considering creating similar local militias in Afghanistan as well.

With violence worsening, the U.S. is also taking some harsher measures. The Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Command have stepped up a campaign of missile strikes against militant targets inside Pakistan, a source of mounting casualties and growing public anger there. The U.S. is planning to deploy at least 12,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year.

Few of the new measures would carry as much political and emotional weight as talking with members of the Taliban, an armed group that has been an American foe since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that followed the attacks was designed to oust the Taliban over its harboring of al Qaeda, and U.S. troops have spent the past seven years trying to capture or kill as many of its members as possible.

U.S. officials stress that they would play a supporting role in any future talks with the Taliban, which they say would be led by the Afghan central government and powerful Afghan tribal figures. The talks would primarily include lower-ranking and mid-level Taliban figures, not top officials from the group's ruling body.

"We'll never be at the table with Mullah Omar," one U.S. official said, referring to the fugitive leader of the Taliban.

The prospective talks would have two main goals, according to senior American officials: extending the Kabul government's authority across Afghanistan and persuading some Taliban figures to cease their attacks against U.S. and Afghan targets.

"We all agree on the need for the people of Afghanistan to come together if they are going to succeed in creating a lasting and viable state," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said by email. "It remains to be seen if some in the Taliban will really renounce violence and extremism and play a constructive role in Afghanistan."

U.S. opposition to talks with the Taliban has been dissolving as the security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan continues to deteriorate. The number of attacks across Afghanistan has skyrocketed, and more U.S. troops are dying there than in Iraq. Pakistan has been rocked by a wave of attacks, including a massive bombing at a Marriott hotel in the capital of Islamabad and the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.