But that did not happen. The president failed to launch diplomacy and then announced the troop withdrawal in a June 2011 speech, in effect snatching away the leverage that would be needed if diplomacy were to have a chance of success. "If you are leaving, why would the Taliban make a deal with you? How would you make the deal stick? The Taliban will talk to you, but just to get you out faster." That comment we heard from an Arab diplomat was repeated across the region.
Yet it was exactly after announcing the U.S. departure that the administration warmed up to the idea of reconciliation. Talks with the Taliban were not about arranging their surrender, but about hastening America's departure. Concerns about human rights, women's rights, and education were shelved. These were not seen as matters of vital U.S. interest, just noble causes that were too costly and difficult to support -- and definitely not worth fighting an insurgency over.
The White House seemed to see an actual benefit in not doing too much. It was happy with its narrative of modest success in Afghanistan and gradual withdrawal -- building Afghan security forces to take over from departing U.S. troops. The goal was to spare the president the risks that necessarily come with playing the leadership role that America claims to play in this region.
THE TRUE KEY TO ending the war, Holbrooke often told us, was to change Pakistan. Pakistan was the sanctuary that the Taliban insurgency used as a launching pad and a place to escape U.S. retaliation. But to convince Pakistan that we meant business, we first had to prove that America was going to stay.
But how? Pakistan's double-dealing was in part a symptom of its bitterness over having been abandoned and then treated as a rogue state after a previous Afghan war, against the Soviets, had been won in 1989. Pakistan was also deeply insecure about India's meteoric rise and growing strategic value to the West. Pakistanis were playing things very close to the vest. We had to get them to open up. Could we convince them that their strategic interests in Afghanistan could be addressed? If so, perhaps in time they might reassess their interests in a way more favorable to ours.
Holbrooke understood that the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA wanted Pakistan to cut ties with the Taliban and do more to fight terrorism. That would never happen, however, without at least some semblance of a normal relationship between Pakistan and the United States. Already in 2009, half the U.S. diplomatic mission in Pakistan worked on intelligence and counterterrorism rather than diplomacy or development. The U.S. Consulate in Peshawar was basically bricks shielding antennas. And it paid big dividends. The CIA collected critical intelligence in Pakistan that allowed for drone strikes against al Qaeda targets and on more than one occasion prevented a terrorist strike in the West. So the Obama administration began carrying out drone strikes in Pakistan on an industrial scale, decimating al Qaeda's command-and-control structure and crippling the organization.
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