New Interview Online
At the Dallas Morning News:
The deal we would cut with them is, OK, we will allow you to rule in your area, but you won’t allow foreign terrorists into your territory. But if the Taliban think they’re winning, they don’t have as much incentive to bargain. The message that we would hope to send to them is, guys, we can do this [attack and seize your territory] whenever we want. We can destroy whatever you’ve built in terms of institutions. Here’s the
deal: We can’t hold it, but you can’t hold it either.We’re not going to be able to kill enough of them to win the war, but you might be able to send the message to them that the best they can do is to bargain.
Think you made a mistake when saying Najibullah’s regime collapsed in 1982 after the Soviets cut financial assistance. As I am sure you are aware, it collapsed in 1992. But the interviewer’s follow-up question then looked a little awkward.
Yup, they made a typo when posting the essay. I’ve asked them to correct it.
[...] Bernard Finel offers the basic outline of a plausible, credible and mutually enforcable deal that could be cut with significnt elements of the Pashtun insurgencies in Afghanistan: [...]