Shuttle diplomacy and conflict resolution: Afghanistan scenario

• Main Author: Eishan Jan, Mohammad Naqib
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malaysiakini 2020
• Subjects: KZ Law of Nations
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/86993/1/86993_Shuttle%20diplomacy%20and%20conflict%20resolution.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/86993/; https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/543337

In some complex conflicts, the parties are so mistrustfully at loggerhead with each other that without ‘conflict mediation’ or ‘shuttle diplomacy’ direct communication between them would be difficult, though not impossible. This was the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan before US started her ‘shuttle diplomacy’ that lead to the recent inauguration of intra-Afghan peace negotiation in Doha, Qatar. The current conflict in Afghanistan is a multifaceted one involving the United States, the Afghan government and the Taliban. In this conflict, the US and the afghan government are ‘strategic partners’ and common antagonists to the Taliban’. For about 20 years, the parties wrestled and used exhaustively all their military might but achieved nothing except infliction of great suffering to civilians including death, injury, destructions of property, displacements and loss of economic opportunities. The stalemate proved to the parties and the world that the conflict in Afghanistan could not be resolved through military means so the better option would be to try pacific means including diplomacy and dialogue. After realising this, and as part of her 2017 ‘South Asia Strategy’, the US decided to start a ‘shuttle diplomacy’ and in September 2018 appointed Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born American diplomat, as her special representative to lead it with an ostensible objective to end its longest and third most expensive war in Afghanistan.