THENEWYORKER, OCTOBER 28, 2019 49
atic discrimination and violence. Now,
in addition, they want to oppress us more?”
Nevertheless, Koofi said, it felt mo-
mentous to be able to criticize the Tal-
iban face to face in Doha. That alone
indicated that something had changed.
At one point, she asked the Taliban
committee members about their posi-
tion on the burqa. It wasn’t necessary,
they said—the hijab was suitable. When
the conference ended, the Taliban gave
gifts to the delegates from Kabul: co-
logne, prayer beads, a prayer mat, and,
for the women, hijabs.
T
he democratic experiment in Af-
ghanistan, which began in 2004,
when Hamid Karzai was elected Pres-
ident, has demoralized many citizens,
who have watched brutal strongmen be
rewarded with cabinet postings, age-
old patronage networks mobilized on
behalf of party politics, and elected offi-
cials enrich themselves through crony-
ism and corruption. Fraud has pro-
foundly contaminated every political
race. When Ghani was elected, in 2014,
the vote was so unreliable that the U.S.
had to invent a new position—chief ex-
ecutive—for his rival, Abdullah Abdul-
lah. This past September 28th, Ghani
faced Abdullah and more than a dozen
other opposition candidates for a second
five-year term. Only a quarter of regis-
tered voters went to the polls—a record
low. In a triumphant press release, the
Taliban, who killed or wounded two
hundred and sixty-three civilians that
day, declared that the “foreign-imposed
process was rejected and spurned by
the masses.”
Although preliminary election results
have yet to be announced, Ghani and
Abdullah have—again—both claimed
victory. If neither candidate receives more
than fifty per cent of the vote, there will
be a runoff. Because of harsh winter con-
ditions in much of Afghanistan, a sec-
ond round might have to be delayed
until the spring. During the interim, any
progress toward peace seems doubtful.
Ghani is expected to win in the end.
A former World Bank researcher with
a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from
Columbia University, he began his ca-
reer as an anticorruption crusader, but
has since developed an aptitude for po-
litical survival. To secure Afghanistan’s
ethnic-Uzbek vote in 2014, he chose for
his running mate Rashid Dostum, a
warlord accused of murdering his wife,
crushing people with tanks, and asphyx-
iating thousands of Taliban prisoners
in metal shipping containers. (Dostum
wasn’t on the ticket this time, in part
because of allegations that he had ab-
ducted a political rival and ordered
guards to sexually assault him with Ka-
lashnikovs. During the recent campaign,
Dostum threw his support behind Ab-
dullah Abdullah, who has lauded his
“authentic style.”)
Ghani has promised to make peace
negotiations with the Taliban a priority
of his second term. But some Western
officials who have worked with him in
the past doubt that he would agree to
any deal with the Taliban that might di-
minish or abbreviate his authority. In
Kabul, Ghani’s former chief of proto-
col, Hamed Akram, told me, “Ghani will
sabotage the peace process to remain
President.” Fawzia Koofi said of Ghani,
“Will he be willing to share power with
the Taliban? To step down and agree on
a political arrangement? No.”
A political settlement with the Tali-
ban would require tremendous compro-
mise from everyone involved. Laurel
Miller, of the International Crisis Group,said, “It will have to be more of a merger
than an acquisition.” Ghani appears to
have in mind a framework that would
permit the Taliban to participate in elec-
tions and hold political office while leav-
ing the current constitution and state
structure basically intact. The Taliban,
meanwhile, have given no indication that
they would accept anything less than the
return of their previous Sharia-based sys-
tem, in a less extreme form. As of now,
in other words, both sides want an ac-
quisition. “And that is why it’s going to
take a long time,” Miller said.A
s divided as Afghanistan can seem,
the line between enemies is sel-
dom indelible. Afghan society is a com-
plex web of relationships and bonds that
often transcend ideologies, which are
themselves mutable. Many Afghan bu-
reaucrats and military officers used to
be ardent communists. Members of the
same family can belong to the govern-
ment and to the insurgency, while re-
maining loyal to one another. The
shrinking of a foreign presence has fur-
ther blurred these lines, making them
easier to cross.
The last time I saw Zubair, the Tal-
iban fighter who defected during the