DUSHANBE, Tajikistan—As the Taliban consolidate Afghanistan’s status as a nexus for much of what is bad in the world right now, from crimes against humanity to the wholesale export of drugs, guns, and terrorism, a bloodthirsty old warlord popped up at a recent meeting of the putative opposition to declare war as the only hope of getting their country back.
There are two paths to Afghanistan’s freedom, Ismail Khan, aged in his mid-70s, told the gathering in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan: jaw-jaw or war-war. Negotiating with the Taliban has never worked, he said. Which leaves war as the only option.
Dushanbe just hosted the second road edition of the Herat Security Dialogue, which until the fall of Afghanistan’s old government used to be held in its namesake city. The gathering was meant to be a chance, more than two years after the Taliban re-took control of Afghanistan, for various opposition groups to come up with a plan to fix the country’s troubling trajectory.
