Attachments
Author: Martine van Bijlert
Date: 13 December 2018
With the renewed focus on possible peace talks in Afghanistan, it is useful to look at what can be learned from processes in other countries. Although they cannot be treated as models, they can serve as examples of what is possible and provide inspiration, ideas and a shared language. In the first dispatch of a new series, Martine van Bijlert looks at the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC. She discusses the main choices – talks without ceasefire, meetings only outside the country, a limited but ambitious agenda and taking the time it needs – and notes how the case of Colombia shows both what is possible and what is difficult in trying to bring a complex conflict to an end.
The Colombian conflict; how is it similar and different to Afghanistan?
Afghanistan in search of a peace process
Afghanistan is in search of a peace process. The Afghan government has just unilaterally ‘launched’ a peace plan in the hope of regaining the initiative. The US is signalling it hopes to reach some kind of breakthrough – either in direct talks with the Taleban or with the Afghan government on board – before its president runs out of patience. The Taleban, in the meantime, have softened their public positions enough to make exploratory talks possible, but have not yet articulated a clear commitment or wish for a negotiated peace. The three-way-relationship is complicated (even without taking the wider international and regional context into account) and does not yet add up to a process with direction or buy-in. It does provide opportunities.
However, in much of the talk about a possible process and in the wish to rush the process along, there is often little acknowledgement of how long negotiations tend to take, how difficult and winding they usually are, and how much determination, patience and skill is required to reach – and keep – agreements. The study of other peace processes can then bring necessary depth to the discussions and infuse them with both hope (that it is possible for parties who feel harmed, betrayed and distrustful to agree on a plan for peace) and realism (that these are long processes that often fail and that in the short term their outcomes rarely lead to the hoped-for stability).
This first dispatch looks at the case of Colombia. It does so with the necessary hesitation, as decades of studying Afghanistan have made it clear that conflicts tend to be more complicated and textured when analysed from within, than when viewed from the outside with a bird’s eye perspective. Nevertheless, in order to be able to ‘compare’ the two countries and to draw inspiration and lessons, this dispatch starts with some summary remarks on the Colombian conflict and its relevance for Afghanistan, after which it presents a more detailed discussion of the peace process and an overview of how this might be relevant for Afghanistan. (1)