"What People Don’t Understand About the Bergdahl Deal" [View all]

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What People Don’t Understand About the Bergdahl Deal

By Fred Kaplan at Slate

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/bowe_bergdahl_and_negotiating_with_the_taliban_why_the_deal_to_free_this.single.html

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The first point is politically important. Many columnists and congressmen make a big point that America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. Well, sometimes America does, but the key thing here is that the Taliban delegates, with whom U.S. officials have been negotiating in Qatar over the fate of Sgt. Bergdahl, are not terrorists. They represent a political faction and a military force in Afghanistan; they are combatants in a war that the United States is fighting. In other words, Bergdahl was not a “hostage” (another erroneous term uttered by Rogers). He was a prisoner of war, and what happened on May 31 was an exchange of POWs.

The United States and practically every other nation that’s ever fought a war have made these sorts of exchanges for centuries. In recent years, American officers have turned over hundreds of detainees to the Afghan government, which in turn freed them in exchange for favors of one sort or another from the Taliban. During the Iraq war, American commanders frequently made similar swaps. The Israeli government (which can’t be considered soft on terror) trades prisoners with Hamas and Hezbollah all the time. In the most dramatic case, Gilad Shalit, an Army private abducted by Hamas, was traded for 1,027 Palestinian and Arab prisoners, 280 of whom had been serving life sentences for terrorist attacks against Israel.

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There’s one more potential bit of good news. This whole exercise has demonstrated that the Taliban’s diplomatic office in Qatar does have genuine links to the Taliban high command. (A few years ago, when fledgling peace talks sputtered and then failed, many concluded that it was a freelance operation unworthy of attention.) And the fact that the exchange came off with clockwork precision (see the Wall Street Journal’s fascinating account of how it happened) suggests that deals with the Taliban are possible, and that a deal signed can be delivered.


Spokesmen for both sides stressed that the deal just made was a prisoner-exchange deal and nothing more—that no further inferences should be made. But American officials from President Obama on down have stressed that a good end to this war can only be a negotiated end, that it must involve an accord with all the factions, and the Taliban are a homegrown faction. Maybe the Bergdahl deal will serve as a prelude to a wider set of talks—in which case this will be looked back upon as a very good day.



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