Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently visited both Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the wake of those trips last week there has been much speculation about possible overtures to the "moderate Taliban" to join a peace process, and potentially gain seats in the civilian Afghan government. Tillerson said as much in a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. He also admonished Pakistan to cut its ties to the Taliban and the related Haqqani network in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the border with Afghanistan. President Ghani has reiterated his own commitment to a peace process in the days since Tillerson's visit.
But is the US really intending to end the conflict--sixteen years long for the US, stretching back to the 1970s for Afghanistan--through diplomacy? In a recent article, senior member of the Center for International Policy Matthew Hoh called this into question, based on the activities of the CIA on the ground in Afghanistan. He described their mission as an attempt to "brutally subjugate and punish the people" who live in areas known to be sympathetic to the Taliban. While the agency claims to be targeting only terrorists, their dragnet is in reality much wider, Hoh says, with brutality against civilians only fueling the fires of insurgency.
Hoh was with the State Department in Afghanistan until 2009, when he resigned his post over the conduct of the war. He had previously served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the State Department and the Marine Corps.
KBOO reporter Sam Bouman spoke with Matthew Hoh over the weekend. The full audio is below; a shorter version aired on the KBOO Evening News for November 1, 2017.
- KBOO