Critical Analysis on Antonio Donini’s “Negotiating with the Taliban”

            In his writing ‘Negotiating with the Taliban’[1], Antonio Donini gave an account on how the negotiation with Taliban, as the ruler of Afghanistan throughout 1996 – 2002 took place. He gave a comprehensive recount with several commentaries on the multiple negotiations that happen with various actors and stakeholders involved. His account is very important if one wants to analyze further on how exactly negotiation with a supposedly brutal armed group took place; what went wrong, what went right, what could have done better in terms of strategy. To help us better understand how exactly concepts and strategies that we learn in class actually play out in real life negotiation, in this particular review, I would like to highlight several instances that were described in Donini’s account while trying to analyze it using several concepts outlined by Dean G. Pruitt and Peter Carnevale in their book, Negotiation in Social Conflict.[2]

            In Donini’s account, one of the most important things that he highlights was the importance of having a thorough assessment of the other party. The ideal preparation and assessment was supposed to formulate our as well as the other party’s limit, goal and possible best alternative to a negotiated agreement or BATNA. From there then we should formulate our demand that is strategically more ambitious than our limit to be proposed to the other party. We can see that in one occurrence, UN failed to do this. Donini recounts one example of what I believe is a failure caused by hasty preparation in assessing Taliban. It was a mission sent by UN headquarter in New York in 1998 to negotiate a comprehensive Memorandum of Understanding with the Taliban.[3] In this case, UN people failed to recognize the possible goal and limit of Taliban to comprehend their motive in the negotiation. This leads UN to mistakenly utilize contending strategy that instantly repulses Taliban into complying. Donini described how UN resorts to using threats like suspending activities or to leave, causing much annoyance to Taliban, turning their supposedly effective communication into one of a retaliatory demonization. This ultimately led to Taliban calling for the expulsion of UN as well as other NGO instead of cooperating in giving them access to reach the population for providing humanitarian relief.

            We can see that UN people assumed wrongly that the Taliban needed them. UN officials thought they could exert some “humanitarian leverage” by threatening Taliban (“if you don’t accept our rules, we’ll leave” or “if you do, we’ll increase aid”) in an already hard headed positional commitment from both parties. The Taliban’s response to all the threats and persuasive arguments are predictably equally contending ‘‘If you don’t accept our terms, we will do without you”[4]  This also happened because UN mischaracterized Taliban from the beginning, mistaking them as similar with the other Afghan factions that simply wants to get a piece of governmental position without realizing that they are a belligerent group with an ambition of ruling Afghanistan as a whole and a deep cultural differences (their ultra conservative Islamic teaching) from UN as well as other factions. Failure to recognize other party’s goal and limit also stems from the failure of really knowing who and what the Taliban stands for. 

            The underlying reasons that make this negotiation tough is also a matter of ideological clash between UN and Taliban. This Taliban’s negotiation is a case study for inter-cultural negotiation where the two parties have a completely different set of values and principles. UN made a mistake in assuming that Taliban had a similar understanding of the purpose and nature of negotiation.[5] UN failed to recognize the deep rooted values of waging jihad as the centre of Taliban’s duty. As the result, most of the times Taliban does not comprehend on what the humanitarian officials had to offer. Taliban’s “Allah will provide” attitude clashes with welfarist assumptions of humanitarian within UN principle. Issues on gender equality, and human rights also became the source of conflict where both sides have a completely different perspective on the matter. Taliban even accused UN and other NGO;s foreign officers of polluting the mind and society of Afghanistan with their western kafir belief..

            Understanding the deep rooted principled differences, sticking to contending strategy is obviously not wise if UN still want to deploy the help for people on the ground. According to Pruitt, such positional commitment strategy where both are determined to hold firm at particular offer and reluctant to make concession[6], is only effective if failure to reach commitment is costly to the target. For Taliban however, not getting the humanitarian aid was not a problem because (a) they have different attitude on welfare, believing that Allah will give the rezeki they deserve, and (b) the possibility of their society being polluted by kafir western values is actually deemed more costly for them.

            Donini in his writing also mentioned the three different approaches that were present in the Taliban cases. First one is what he calls principled approach. This approach openly advocates change in Taliban policies to be more in line with internationally recognized norms. This often involves threat of withdrawals and public demonization which basically makes it as a contending strategy that was proven ineffective before. Secondly, the accomodationist who were more pragmatic in a sense that they were willing to engage on technical issues with Taliban supposedly moderate technocrats in hope that such arrangement will “deradicalize” Taliban through some organic changes over time..The second one is basically in line with compromising  style of conflict where UN is more into concession-making than contending. We can see this with the case of WHO who is still willing to deploy health care aid despite the fact that Taliban doesn’t allow women to be employed as aid worker anymore. WHO was being pragmatic at that time, as long as they are able to deliver some form of relief they chose not to problematize Taliban’s poor treatment of women and minorities politically and openly. This is what he calls quiet diplomacy. However, I believe this becomes ineffective where it is impossible to separate the relief needs of a particular group from the political circumstances that causes their vulnerability. The facts that access was denied or that abuses against civilians were committed is intertwined with their humanitarian condition,   UN Coordinators were at some point obliged to address the human rights violation that happens.

            The third approach was “duck and weave” which try to avoid dealing with the Taliban as far as possible by working directly with communities and counting on their support and their ability to extract concession from the Taliban. This is sort of the combination of concession-making and avoiding at the same where UN officials are trying to get a concession from Taliban by not directly working with them as well as collaborating with the communities on the ground. I this approach we can see both parties aside from exchanging concessions are also playing on the strategy of inaction when it was necessary.

            Beside the above mentioned obstacles and failure in dealing with Taliban, Donini also give a recount on how a unified framework for all UN bodies in combining several strategies is very useful in having effective negotiations. UN can finally achieve both the advantage of silent diplomacy (where they also duck and weave) and public positions when they had this division of labor between the humanitarian actors who focused on fighting for access and the Human Right Advisor and consultative groups composed on NGO, donors and UN Agencies who focused on sensitive information on the violations done by Taliban. By having a clear guideline that involve all of UN stakeholders involved, they manage to avoid an overlapping interest or incoherent strategies that may cancel out each other’s objectives (i.e public condemnation done by human rights group and UN headquarter  offended the Taliban which causes humanitarian workers on the ground failed to get access to civilian). Tension between HQ and local negotiator often happened because there was too much political yet irrelevant issue that interferes with the communication.

            Donini also demonstrated how having a through preparation can significantly improve the result of negotiation. Unline the MOU negotiation; there was this time where UN needs to find a way to weaken Taliban’s policy that prevents women from getting aid in Edict No. 8. They already decided to get a clear agreement on basic issues of principle and if this doesn’t work, they already defined their collective conditions for engagement and disengagement. This time they had a BATNA; an inter agency agreement on what to do if they failed so that they have a unified voice and actions.

            In conclusion, having a thorough pre negotiation preparation is a must to identify our as well as the other party’s goal demand and BATNA. Without identifying those first, negotiation can be trapped in wrong assumptions about the other party, making any effort to solve whatever issues at hand fail. This also highlights how culture is a crucial factor in negotiation where mismatched institutional posturing can causes ineffective communications. Secondly, direct political condemnation from HQ was often counterproductive because it resulted in both sides indulging in rhetoric and political posturing that made the search for practical solutions more difficult. There need to be a unified approaches to bridge and synchronize the interest of various agencies within UN to ensure that they don’t cancel each other’s interest out, making negotiations futile to solve any issues.

           

REFERENCES

BOOKS

Pruitt, Dean G., and Peter J. Carnevale. Negotiation in social conflict. Maidenhead, Eng.: Open University Press, 2011.

JOURNAL AND OTHERS

Donini, Antonio. Negotiating with the Taliban in  Humanitarian Diplomacy: Practitioner and Their Craft edited by Larry Minear and Hazel Smith. Tokyo : United Nations University Press, 2007.

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[1] Antonio Donini. “Negotiating with the Taliban.” in Humanitarian Diplomacy: Practitioners and Their Craft, edited by Larry Minear dan Hazel Smith, 153-173. (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2007)

[2] Dean G. Pruitt and Peter J. Carnevale, Negotiation in social conflict (Maidenhead, Eng.: Open University Press, 2011).

[3] Donini 2007.

[4] Donini 2007

[5] Ibid., 164

[6] Pruitt and Carnevale 2011