Negotiations Between Afghan Government and the Taliban Interest Vs. Power and Position In 2007 a series of increasingly violent attacks in many provinces and the capital of Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai decided to negotiate with the Taliban, and offered them senior government positions in exchange for peace focusing on public interest. Dispirited by losses at the hands of NATO bombings, the Taliban also decided to talk. However, the Taliban’s demands changed, and dramatically increased every year. The parties have not reached an agreement yet because of the Taliban’s excessive demands. The Taliban’s excessiveness in the past few years bring up the question: Are the Taliban exclusively focused on position and power, and the government on interest? This difference is critical because if the Taliban is only focused on position and power, the government is see as an opponent rather than a partner and the goal of this negotiation is victory rather than an agreement. Most of the Taliban are a group of angry people who are ready to lose anything to gain power. While the top tier of the Taliban comprises the ideologues, a majority of the members are not in the group for defending or promoting an ideology. Many are in this group because they do not have alternative employment opportunities from the government. Several are dismayed at the progress made by the government and disappointed with the unfulfilled promises that were made to them by the international community. Categorizing the potential partners in this negotiation poses the first big challenge that grips the government. The Afghan president is not the only person to decide and accept the Taliban’s demands, but has to get support from its cabinet. The president is obliged to answer questions to all other parties such as its cabinet and political groups. And it is very difficult for the Taliban and, all the parties in the government to reach one agreement. The Taliban in this negotiation are entirely focused on power and position based strategies, which is obviously not helping them. When comparing power or position with interest in a negotiation, power usually deals with selfishness, and interest deals with mutual benefits. “The Power based approach adopts a realist view, where the inherent egotistic passions in human nature are the source of all conflicts,” says Ipsita Chatterjee in “Applying models of conflict negotiation to the Hindu-Muslim Conflict in Ahmedabad, India,” She also writes “therefor humans are ontologically predisposed to selfishness, aggressive behavior and competition.” In negotiation between the Taliban and Afghan government, the Taliban posed three key demands that clearly show that the Taliban uses selfish power and position strategies: Their first demand is a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, or they will not enter the peace negotiation. Their Second demand is the release of all Taliban prisoners or else they will kill or kidnap government officials. And the third demand is, control over ten southern provinces or else, they will have suicide attacks on those provinces and kill innocent civilians. The Taliban have power over the Afghan government because the Taliban do not care about civilian losses, while the government does. The key basis of any negotiation is that competing positions share competing interests and that the parties on both sides of the table could then explore common and overlapping interests. However, in this negotiation the demands made by the Taliban are based on their power they have over the government. Since, the Taliban do not care about people of Afghanistan they are not concerned about reaching a mutual agreement, Instead their focus is more on power and position to gain victory. The Afghan government, on the other hand does not want any war, they are more concerned about safety of the people of Afghanistan. In response to the Taliban’s demands, Karzai demands peace and stability in the country. Karzai’s Administration is concerned about the people’s welfare and a peaceful environment for everybody; therefore the government is using interest-based strategy in this negotiation. “The interest-based approach must seek solutions which are empirical and hence objective and not perceptive and hence subjective,” writes Chaterjee in “Applying models of conflict negotiation to the Hindu-Muslim Conflict in Ahmedabad, India,” the Afghan government in this negotiation is being very objective, they want to reach an agreement that is fair and best for the people of Afghanistan. Since this is a conflict negotiation, the Afghan government focuses to build a strong long-term relationship with the Taliban leaders. “In conflict negotiation in recent ears whereby negotiators are not simply bent upon increasing the share of the pie but on more constructive issues like improving the relational considerations,” Chaterjee believes, she also writes, “the underlying assumption seems to an effort towards long-term bridge building rather than short term satisfaction.” In this case, the Afghan government focuses on public interest to build long-term relationship with the Taliban in order to bring peace in the country. Their strategy however, seems to create a rift within the Taliban by talking to the moderate members and providing them reasons to integrate within the Karzai administration. The Afghan government does not want to give equal power and status to the Taliban. Because legitimacy is the biggest asset that the Afghan government has over its Taliban counterparts, granting the Taliban an equal status and legitimizing it as partners in peace, the Afghan government will undermine its own credibility among people, and open the floodgates for other political groups. The Taliban, on the other hand are not a reliable group to trust in negotiations to bring peace and stability because they have disagreements among themselves. Once they have officially gained power and legitimacy, they are slated to compete and fight among themselves for that power Clearly, the Afghan government needs to have strong reasons not only to refuse the Taliban’s demands for equal status, but also to reach a mutual agreement based on the interest of all the people of Afghanistan. President Karzai is more concerned about people, he does not want any more lives to be sacrificed in this battle, in order to reach an agreement he is ready to accept any reasonable demands made by the Taliban. “I wish there would be a demand as easy as this. I wish that they would want a position in the government. Said Karzai, “I will give them a position." clearly, he is more focused on interest, which in this case not helping him to reach an agreement. Rather than focusing only on interest, he should focus on power and position. “In some circumstances, the injunction to concentrate on interests rather than positions may be a useful reminder to seek out the underlying causes of conflict,” states Chris Provis in “Interest Vs. Position” however, he writes “the approach may also be misleading.” This means that, government’s focus only on interest and accepting excessive demands of the Taliban makes them weak in the negotiation. This weakness gives the Taliban a power to negotiate well and get what they want. “Interest in some cases carries a bias against one party, where the party's unity is especially dependent on a unified position,” writes Chris Provis, here, the government’s goal is to stop the Taliban from killing innocent people and bring peace however, and they can only reach this goal if the government utilizes its power as well. An exclusive focus on interest makes it difficult for the government to make specific demands that will help both parties reach their goals. By Focusing only on their interest, the government avoids seeking more information about the Taliban, and gaining a better understanding of the conflicts between them. In other words, the current method of negotiation used by the government focuses on the issues that are important to one party not to both. In order for the government to reach an agreement with the Taliban, they should be more proactive and focused on different aspects of the negotiation strategies. “Conflict negotiation is contextual and experiential. Awareness of the different approaches provides a tool kit,” writes Chaterjee, if the government utilizes different approaches, and gains more information about the Taliban, they will focus on most pertinent issues, and they will more likely be able to convince the Taliban to accept the government’s demands. The government will be considered better negotiators if they research well, do their “homework”, and remain open to opinions. They also need to be rational and courageous in the face of negative reactions from the Taliban and the people of Afghanistan. Overall, government’s exclusive focus on interest is good, and the desire to avoid consideration of positions and power in favor of interests is a reasonable method. The drawback however, is that it avoids the sort of debate and discussion about positions and power that is important for the government. So the government, need to use their power, and focus on public interest in order to reach an agreement. In addition, the government needs to investigate more about the Taliban and their demands, and use this information to get the Taliban to reach an agreement. “Typically, when the other side makes seemingly unreasonable demands, negotiators adopt a defensive mind-set: “How can I avoid having to accept this?” writes Deepak Malhotra, and Max H. Bazermans in “Investigative Negotiation,” the government in this case should utilize the tools to avoid the Taliban’s excessive demands. Deepak Malhotra, and Max H. Bazermans also believe that in any negotiation it is important to ask questions, “investigative negotiators confront difficult demands the same way they confront any statement from the other party: “What can I learn from the other side’s insistence on this issue? What does this demand tell me about this party’s needs and interests? How can I use this information to create and capture value?” the government should use the same techniques and demand aggressively, ask for concessions, they should be strong and firm in administrative decisions. Evidently, the Taliban in this negotiation are more unpredictable in their decision-making process. During this negotiations the Taliban have staged a comeback during many years and they are unlikely to regress given the mounting discontent among the population with the Afghan government. They continue making excessive demands under any settlement in the past few years, and continue to seek greater power at the expense of others in the group and make the task of negotiations more complicated. Because the Taliban are not concerned about the peace and taking innocent lives, they act as careless wavers. For example, in 2007, the Taliban agreed to enter peace talks with the Afghan government, however, a week prior to the negotiation they refused to meet just because they wanted to have an office in Qatar. The second time, after many suicide attacks and other related violence in the country, the government was concerned and asked for another chance of negotiation. However, the Taliban imposed a condition that they will only talk with the government when their first demand, the removal of foreign troops, was accepted. "The Taliban will never negotiate with the Afghan government in the presence of foreign forces,” stated Taliban’s spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi, “even if Karzai gives up his presidency, it's not possible Taliban would agree to negotiations.” He said. These actions of the Taliban are other examples in this negotiation that show the Taliban are more focused to seize power rather than the interests of all. Nonetheless, the negotiation method the Taliban use, exclusive focus on power and position, does not help them either. What they should do is to be more open to the government demands and seek other options and alternatives besides killing people to help them to negotiate. By applying the power and position based approach in this negotiation the Taliban risk the interests of everyone including themselves. Even though most of the time the power based approach has been tacitly in negotiations such as this, the Taliban should also focus on interest of the government and the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban needs to find out why the government does not want to accept all their demands. They should seek to understand and mitigate the government’s constraints and interpret their demands as opportunities to find common ground. The Taliban should focus more on public interest to get status in Afghan government. Using power and terrorism to gain position will not get them anywhere in this negotiation. Instead, they should also focus on interest that can lead to a successful negotiation outcome a result of which will help the people of Afghanistan to have a stable government and peaceful country. Over all, in order for the Taliban and the government to reach an agreement, they both should use various methods of negotiation techniques such as interest, power and position. Usually when a negotiation deals with conflicts, it is better to research and find more than one solution. “Perhaps the most important lesson the extremist negotiator has to teach both executives and military officers is that in the very context where one feels the most pressure to act fast and stake out an unwavering position, it is best to do neither. Writes Malhotra and Bazerman in “Investigative Negotiation,” they also say “control and power can be asserted most effectively by slowing down the pace of the negotiation, actively leading counterparts into a constructive dialogue, and demonstrating genuine openness to others’ perspectives,” which is exactly what the Taliban and the government need to do. Malhotra and Bazerman believe that, slowing down the pace of negotiation is not a bad idea, and it gives negotiators more time to think better “that isn’t giving in. It is being strategic rather than reactive. It’s thinking several moves ahead about how your actions might be perceived. And it’s making tactical choices that elicit constructive responses and advance your true objectives.” What both parties should do is to have a balance and focus on both interest and power in this negotiation. They should understand each other’s positions, as well as interests and power. Negotiation is an information game. Those who know how to obtain information perform better than those who stick with what they know. So they both should research about what each party wants, and be open to alternative options. Because the decision to challenge assumptions, probe below the surface, and avoid taking no for an answer will help both negotiators to improve their options and strike better deals. More generally, using both the interest and position based approach can help these negotiators transform a fruitless negotiation such as this, into one with potential for building trust and cooperation, creating value, and engendering mutual satisfaction. Citations:
Chatterjee, Ipsita. "Applying models of conflict negotiation to the Hindu-Muslim conflict in Ahmedabad, India: Implications and lessons. “International Journal of Conflict Management. 17.2 (2006): 154-174. Print.

Malhotra, Deepak, and Max H. Bazerman. "Investigative Negotiation." Harvard
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