On creating your own enemies - Christina Goldbaum in NYT:
‘For the better part of two decades, one name above all others inspired fear among ordinary Afghans: Sirajuddin Haqqani.
To many, Mr. Haqqani was a boogeyman, an angel of death with the power to determine who would live and who would die during the U.S.-led war. He deployed his ranks of Taliban suicide bombers, who rained carnage on American troops and Afghan civilians alike. A ghostlike kingpin of global jihad, with deep ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, he topped the United States’ most-wanted list in Afghanistan, with a $10 million bounty on his head.
But since the Americans’ frantic withdrawal in 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power, Mr. Haqqani has portrayed himself as something else altogether: A pragmatic statesman. A reliable diplomat. And a voice of relative moderation in a government steeped in religious extremism.’
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‘“Twenty years of fighting jihad led us to victory,” Mr. Haqqani told me earlier this year in an interview in Kabul, his second ever with a Western journalist. “Now we have opened a new chapter of positive engagement with the world, and we have closed the chapter of violence and war.”’
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‘Mr. Haqqani and his family have a long — and once secret — history of just that kind of outreach: At several points during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the Haqqanis sought rapprochement with the United States, a New York Times investigation revealed. But American officials mostly rebuffed the Haqqanis, viewing them as irredeemable and untrustworthy in light of the mass death they had wrought during the war.
Some diplomats now say that the Haqqanis’ bids for dialogue were missed opportunities, ones that illuminate how the American war on terrorism created the very enemies it sought to destroy — and help explain why the United States’ war in Afghanistan carried on for 20 years.’
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‘During the war against the Soviets, Jalaluddin Haqqani cultivated patrons among the Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies. He fostered close ties with the C.I.A., which sent him hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and weapons. He also grew close to Osama bin Laden, who would go on to establish Al Qaeda with the Haqqanis’ support.
All the while, Mr. Haqqani was grooming his son Sirajuddin to take over the sprawling jihadi network he was creating, sustained by a hugely lucrative criminal empire of drugs, kidnapping and extortion that spanned the Arab world. Even when Sirajuddin was a child, neighbors and relatives called him “khalifa,” a title in Islam that refers to a successor or leader.
The younger Mr. Haqqani said his earliest memories were of traveling to mujahedeen training camps in eastern Afghanistan to visit his father.’
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‘American forces hunted Mr. Haqqani, to no avail — a point in which he takes great pride. He told of changing locations sometimes 10 times a night and never using the same cars or bodyguards twice to outsmart American forces.
“I ask you to ask our enemies how they could not kill me or arrest me with all the equipment they had,” he said, sitting in a beige leather armchair under fluorescent lights.’
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‘Mr. Haqqani has sold his efforts to establish ties with other countries — currently, no other nation officially recognizes the Taliban government — as part of his vision for its leaders to be players on the international stage.
He has built strong working relationships with United Nations officials and European countries, foreign officials told me. He has signaled a green light for Chinese investment and developed close ties to Russia.
In pitching himself as a reliable, practical partner, he has tried to shake the almost mythological lore around him as a terrorist mastermind and sworn enemy of the United States — a reputation forged over 20 years of war.
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‘In my conversation with Mr. Haqqani, he insisted that no terrorist groups were present in Afghanistan, saying that “the Islamic Emirate controls every corner of the country.” A more nuanced reading of the security environment under the Taliban might be that, while terrorist groups have a presence in Afghanistan, the fact that they have not attacked targets in the West over the past three years is a sign of Mr. Haqqani’s intent to engage internationally.
The question is what he might get in return.
“It’s a dangerous idea, working with the Haqqanis,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former coordinator of the United Nations’ monitoring group on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “You don’t know what side the Haqqanis will be standing on on the day you deal with them — your side or their own or the side of international terrorists.”’
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‘In 2004, the Haqqanis approached Mr. Karzai again in an attempt to reconcile, only to have the request effectively ignored. “There was a chance to stop the Haqqanis from becoming terrorists, but that’s when we ignored them,” said Umer Daudzai, who served as Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff at the time.
At the height of the war in 2010, the Haqqanis were still secretly seeking rapprochement. They exchanged letters unofficially with American officials proposing ways of easing hostilities and asked through other back channels to meet with the Americans, according to two people with knowledge of the interactions.
A year later, Mr. Haqqani’s uncle, Mr. Omari, met with American officials at a Raffles hotel in Dubai, accompanied by the head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, a patron of the Haqqanis who had helped broker the discussions, those people said.
Then, around 2015, the Haqqanis sat down with American officials alone for the first time in decades and discussed finding a path to ending the war, according to three people with knowledge of the encounter.
Sitting in a private lounge of an upscale European hotel, Mr. Omari told American officials that he had been sent by his family to deliver a message, those people said. Both the Haqqanis and the United States wanted peace in Afghanistan, he said. The Americans had toppled the Taliban government, killed bin Laden and established a democratic Afghan republic. So why, he asked, was the United States still fighting?
In response, Laurel Miller, the State Department’s acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, admitted that as conflicts drag on, their original rationale often becomes lost and they become self-perpetuating.
“The United States has lost the ability to answer the question for itself,” Ms. Miller said to Mr. Omari, referring to the reason the United States remained at war, according to two people in the meeting. “Right now, we are in the middle of a process to try and figure it out.”
Looking back now, some former officials told me that the United States, thirsty for revenge after the deadliest attack ever on American soil, seemed to create the very enemies it sought to destroy.’
Read the article here.
As conflicts drag on, their original rationale often becomes lost.
The US created the very enemies it sought to destroy. And the US is by no means the only country who does this.
Turning down those who seek rapprochement, out of stubbornness, fear, stupidity or just sheer hunger war didn’t stop after the US left Afghanistan.
Just look at today’s conflicts.
The original rationale becomes lost, the conflict drags on.