Afghanistan: Negotiating Peace

For nearly ten years, the U.S. and the international community have been engaged in the struggle to secure a stable peace in Afghanistan. The international task force organized by The Century Foundation, under the leadership of Ambassadors Lakhdar Brahimi and Thomas Pickering, just released their report, Afghanistan: Negotiating Peace. Their findings and recommendations seek to determine what kind of political path might lead to ending the war. The task force concludes that Afghanistan’s long and debilitating war is fundamentally stalemated. The Taliban are not going to be eradicated, and the Kabul government—still supported by the large majority of Afghans—is not going to be overthrown. The inter-national community will not abandon the country due to the ongoing threat of al Qaeda. The task force argues that, to end this war with a durable compromise settlement, a complex and multi-tiered negotiating framework will be essential. The time to start that political process, it concludes, is now.