Lessons Learned from Past Afghan Peace Negotiations

The U.S. government (USG) is involved in deliberations over policy and engagement strategies towards key stakeholders in Afghan negotiations, including factions of the Taliban movement. This paper provided a historical analysis of past negotiations since the 1980s, including the 1988 Geneva Accord, the 1992 Peshawar Accord, the 1993 Islamabad Accord, the Taliban-Northern Alliance mediations of the mid-1990s, and the 2001 Bonn Agreement.

The report proposed a research hypothesis and competing alternative hypothesis consisting of five factors that have contributed to success -however limited- during these negotiations. These five factors are: 1. adequate representation of conflict parties reflecting battlefield realities and preempting spoilers, 2. negotiation “ripeness”, 3. good faith of signatories and guarantors, 4. lead mediators’ skill, cultural sensitivities and use of an appropriate negotiation technique, 5. Afghan ownership of the negotiation process, giving it national legitimacy.

The paper based its recommendations for future negotiations on these five factors. It offered a literature review of conflict resolution theory and its relevance to the Afghan situation, and provided an analysis of each negotiation process based on interviews with key players involved in the negotiations as well as archival and secondary material research. The paper then evaluated the negotiation processes against the analytic framework, and concluded with a summary of lessons learned and their applicability to negotiations moving forward.