IRA or Hezbollah Precedent for Afghanistan?

"... But there are two major pitfalls. The first is ascertaining the true attitude of Mullah Omar and his immediate circle. After all, Omar is a cleric who views the world in starkly dualistic terms, and political compromise seems antithetical to his nature. He might very well deem unacceptable anything short of a complete capitulation by Karzai and the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces -- neither of which is on the table.

Another major stumbling block, however, might be potential differences between Karzai and Washington over the terms of any power-sharing deal. The Saudi role in trying to broker talks cannot help but call to mind Riyadh's efforts in bringing about an end to the Lebanese civil war. Yet there is one component of that settlement which would be completely unacceptable to the U.S. in an Afghan context -- the Hezbollah precedent.

The Taif accords -- bolstered by subsequent agreements and U.N. resolutions -- called for Lebanon's sectarian militias to disarm, giving up their capacity to field independent military forces and thereby block the central Lebanese government from enforcing its writ over the entire country. The militias' members were instead to enter the political process as individuals. 

Hezbollah, however, escaped these provisions by being designated as a "national liberation movement" whose arms were necessary to protect Lebanon and liberate territory that at the time was still being occupied by Israel and its proxies. As a result, Hezbollah never had to dismantle its "state within a state." Instead of submitting to the authority of the Lebanese government, Hezbollah exercises a veto power over what the Lebanese state can or cannot do.

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO coalition troops in Afghanistan, has endorsed the conditions laid out by Karzai: that insurgents must abandon violence, sever links to terrorists and embrace the Afghan constitution. Yet left vague is whether this permits the Taliban to exercise a Hezbollah-style option. Karzai might be open to allowing the Taliban to control a sub-state within Afghanistan in return for leaving his government intact and in control of other parts of the country....

In any case, we are unlikely to see any immediate breakthroughs resulting from the negotiations. As for the long-term, it remains to be seen if the talks ultimately produce a Northern Ireland-style agreement where the Taliban, like the IRA, gives up the armed struggle and enters the political process -- the model specifically cited by Petraeus as an example -- or whether the U.S. might have to reconcile itself to what happened in Iraq, where Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army defied the U.S., fought both coalition and Iraqi government forces, and ended up, not as a prisoner in the dock, but as a kingmaker in the current Iraqi political process...."