Peace with the Taliban - 2010-01-18

You have heard us suggest before, that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. So how can we extricate ourselves from such a war without losing face?

According to information from various sources, the US cost of the war in Afghanistan is about $30 billion dollars per year. The Taliban, on the other hand, supports its war effort largely by facilitating the Afghan opium trade which has an approximate value of $4 billion dollars a year.

So here is our suggestion. First, efforts should be made to negotiate a truce with the Taliban. Then a deal should be offered where the parties will agree to partition Afghanistan into a Taliban portion and a democratic portion without the Taliban restrictions. As part of this negotiation the US will agree to buy the Taliban’s annual opium crop for between 2-4 billion dollars a year. Consider it foreign aid money, because the crop would then be destroyed by the US.

The result, if achieved, is that the war is over; a huge amount of opium is off the market; those who don’t want to live under a Taliban regime are free to do leave, and the US and its allies have extricated themselves from this terrible war.

Is this doable? We will never know unless we try. We believe it’s at least as good a proposal as taking an additional 30,000 young men and women away from their families and putting them in harm’s way while wasting billions of dollars.

President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Here is his chance to deserve it. Real peace can only be achieved by dialogue. So let’s begin the dialogue.