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-- A. Serwer
The Washington Post has a great piece up explaining why previous efforts at reconciliation -- getting Taliban fighters to lay down their arms -- have failed. The Afghan government seems to have a habit of luring fighters away with promises they have no intention of keeping:
The men who recruited Mohammed to the government's side said they feel sorry for him, and for the dozens of other insurgents they have persuaded to stop fighting this year through promises they knew to be false.
"We have nothing to offer these people," said Haji Jan Mohammed, director of the government's reconciliation program for Nangarhar and Laghman provinces, in Afghanistan's volatile east. "We don't get any kind of assistance from the central government, so we promise them jobs but there are no jobs, and we promise them land but there is no land."
The piece reports reconciliation efforts under the previous administration were all but ignored, and the program's budget was apparently $3 million, which isn't much for something that is presumably a huge part of the new strategy. It's less clear about how much better funded the program will be from now on:
A recent Japanese government pledge of $5 billion in aid for Afghanistan is expected to be applied largely to reintegration efforts, and the United States has also vowed to commit money.I guess my question would be, how effective or alluring will future offers be given the Afghan government's reputation for breaking its promises?
-- A. Serwer
