Noah Feldman, Columnist

Secret Taliban Talks May Save Afghanistan

What, exactly, is so terrible about Karzai negotiating separately with the same Taliban that the U.S. has repeatedly tried and failed to engage?

February 4, 2014 at 10:14 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

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The Barack Obama administration is shocked -- shocked!-- that Afghan President Hamid Karzai wassecretly negotiating with the Taliban. The previously undisclosed negotiations certainly explain what White House adviser John Podesta recently called Karzai's "erratic" behaviorin refusing to negotiate an agreement to keep U.S. forces in the country after 2014.

But what, exactly, is so terrible about Karzai negotiating separately with the same Taliban that the U.S. has repeatedly tried and failed to engage? In fact, although the Taliban are very likely playing the outgoing president, he is exactly the person who should be trying to negotiate an entrance to Afghan politics for the Taliban that would not involve mass killings of people who sided with the U.S. No doubt Karzai is trying to save his own skin. But there is at least a chance he could save the lives of many other Afghans, too.