Pakistan is helping the Taliban. Now what?

As we all try to dig out of the mess left by the Bush years, we will have to increasingly be turning our attention to what is happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

The current issue of Foreign Affairs has an article that makes the claim that Afghanistan, Bin Laden's former (and current home?), is slipping away from the West.  A Times story today confirms what many have believed - that the resurgence of the Taliban, a radical Sunni group closely aligned with Al Qaeda, is being supported by the our "ally" in the region, Pakistan. 

Western diplomats in both countries and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies — in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence — have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervor but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan’s vulnerable western flank.

More than two weeks of reporting along this frontier, including dozens of interviews with residents on each side of the porous border, leaves little doubt that Quetta is an important base for the Taliban, and found many signs that Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them...

Two questions immediately come to mind here.  

1. What is the American government's plan to prevent Afghanistan from sliding into chaos, and once again becoming a haven for radical Sunni elements, ones that did in fact launch the 9/11 attack on the United States?  Can Senator Biden's excellent set of hearings on American foreign policy take this on in the coming weeks?

2.  Why is okay for us to talk to and work with Pakistani and Saudi elements who are known supporters of Al Qaeda, and not talk to Iran? We have all come to learn that this Administration is prone to simplistic thinking, meaning that they have the capacity to reduce complex situations down to an argument so simple that it is no longer an accurate representation of what is happening on the ground.  I think we are in such a moment with the Administration's single-minded focus on making Iran - not Al Qaeda, not the Taliban, not repressive autocracies - the new regional uber-threat in the Middle East. 

Why is it okay for us to talk to, and work with, nations like China, Russia, Venezuela, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, all of whom are engaged in activities we strongly oppose, but cannot talk to Iran, a traditional "great power" player in the Middle East?  The Persians have been players on the world stage since the time of the Greeks, long before the existence of many of the nations on the current National Security council.  What makes the Iranians so different from these other countries? And how we can possibly contemplate isolating a government so closely aligned with the governing party of our great project in Iraq, a government who as recently as 2001 helped us defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Given the close cultural, political, religious and economic ties Iran has to critical actors in both Afghanistan and Iraq, I don't believe it is possible for us to imagine bringing a sustained and lasting peace to the region without active Iranian involvement.  Here I agree wholeheartedly with the Iraq Study Group report.  We need to talk to and engage all the regional actors in the regional peace process.  We should have no illusions about who we are dealing with, but without such a process the President's policy really is "stay the course" plus, and almost guarenteed to fail. 

If recent press reports are to be believed, the current radical leader of Iran is under increasing pressure at home.  If his power is derived to some degree from the fear of future American belligerence, why not complement our moving carriers into the Persian Gulf with a public overture to him and his government? No deals, just a meeting, a high profile meeting?  Or a public meeting of low level foreign advisors?  My own sense is that by doing so we will undermine the entire rationale of his public argument at home, and accelerate the departure of this terrible regional actor. 

One of the great choices America will have to make in the coming years is whether we take sides in the millenial-long struggle for power in the Middle East between the Arabs and Persians, the Sunnis and the Shiites.  By eliminating Iran's two great regional enemies, the Taliban and Saddam, we tipped the regional balance towards the Persians and the Shiites.  Now our actions seem to be intent on tipping everything back a little towards the Arabs and the Sunnis.  But is this a game we want to, or are truly able to play?  The Post has a must-read story today on these Sunni-Shiite tensions are playing out in the region's media, something we wrote about a few days ago.   

No matter how we look at our future policy in the Middle East, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Iran is and will always be at its center.  Just a few years ago the Iranian government helped us defeat the Taliban, and have like us have a great interest in slowing rise of radical Sunni Islam.  It is time we start getting smarter about to look at our long-term interests there, and work towards a goal of not isolating Iran but engaging them in bringing their region to a more modern, democratic and peaceful place.