A television in an appliance shop in Kabul shows Afghan President Hamid Karzai taking part in a live debate with two of his rivals, Ramazan Bashardost and Ashraf Ghani. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

By Carlotta Gall
New York Times
August 17, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan — Whether and how to negotiate peace with the Taliban has become the one issue that no candidate in the Afghan presidential election can avoid taking a stand on. There is broad agreement that the war must end, but debate swirls around whether the government of President Hamid Karzai is moving effectively toward persuading the Taliban to end their insurgency.

Although Mr. Karzai has often talked about negotiating with the Taliban, little concrete has happened. The government’s reconciliation program for Taliban fighters is barely functioning. A Saudi mediation effort has stalled. Last-minute efforts to engage the Taliban in order to allow elections to take place remain untested. Meanwhile the Obama administration has just sent thousands more troops here in an attempt to push back Taliban gains.

Mr. Karzai, who polls indicate is still the front-runner, is the most vocal candidate in calling for negotiations, pledging that if he is re-elected he will hold a traditional tribal gathering and invite members of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another opposition leader, to make peace.

And just in the past few weeks, his government has started several initiatives to approach local Taliban commanders through tribal elders. The government also has started work to win over the tribes by hiring thousands of their young men to be part of a local protection force, primarily to ensure security for elections. But each of Mr. Karzai’s three main opponents is critical of his record in following through on such promises.

Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani and Ramazan Bashardost all oppose the Taliban, but they also promise if elected to do better and to make peace a priority. The candidates differ on how to pursue a settlement: by negotiating a comprehensive peace with the Taliban leadership; or by trying to draw away midlevel Taliban commanders and foot soldiers, an approach that has been tried with little success over the past seven years as the ranks of fighters have swelled.

Mr. Abdullah, the candidate for the largest opposition bloc, the National Front, and Mr. Ghani, a former finance minister, say the first step must be a grass-roots approach through community and tribal councils to address the grievances of people who have taken up arms against the government. “If you lose the people, you lose the war,” Mr. Abdullah said in an interview.

Mr. Ghani advocates a cease-fire as the next step, with political negotiations only later. “It’s not going to be easy,” he told journalists at a briefing. “It is going to be quite complex and quite tough, but we need to create the conditions of confidence.”

Among those urging a wide-reaching political solution is the head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide. A peace process, or reconciliation as he prefers to call it, has to be a top priority of any new government, as does improving relations with Pakistan, which has long backed the Taliban, he said.

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