One of the few subjects which unite left and right in the west is dislike of the Taliban. The former abhors their abuse of women and contempt for human rights; the latter their hatred for America and Israel. So the notion that the governments now waging war against them should instead negotiate with them has, at least until recently, met with little favour in any western political quarter. James Fergusson, a British journalist who has been covering Afghanistan for 14 years, believes that dealing with the Taliban is in the interests of both foreigners and Afghans. His argument, woven through a book which describes the rise, fall and rise of a bunch of Pashtun guerrillas who have pinned down the armed forces of the world's great powers in an unwinnable war, comes in two parts: that the Taliban are not as bad as westerners think, and that they are too important to be ignored.
On the first part, he points out that at first the Taliban improved life for Afghans. They (the word is a plural, denoting seekers after knowledge) emerged from the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal, when competing groups of mujahideen blew Kabul to pieces, warlords sliced the countryside up into fiefdoms and bandits set up roadblocks to extort money from travellers. With their swift enforcement of tribal law and their brutal sharia punishments, the Taliban were, initially, welcomed by their fellow Pashtuns.
But the chaos of civil war was swiftly replaced by a horrible new order. The Taliban stopped girls from going to school and women from leaving their houses without their husbands, executed criminals in front of crowds, sawed off the hands of thieves, forbade people from using computers, listening to music or watching TV, and destroyed the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan.
All these things were widely reported in the west, and, in Fergusson's view, exaggerated. On educating girls, for instance, he argues that the Taliban say they are not against it, so long as girls are not taught alongside boys. Unfortunately, when they were in power they did not have enough money to set up girls' schools, so the girls had to be excluded. Still, the girls could always be taught at home. The Taliban, generously, did not object to that.
Fergusson recognises that westerners are likely to find the Taliban's morality repugnant. Yet he argues that it is not very different from traditional Pashtun attitudes. To some extent, that is true: Pashtuns have long kept their women locked up in fortresses. But even Pashtuns found the Taliban too harsh. When western forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, crowds cheered not just in Kabul, which has always been relatively liberal, but also in the Pashtun-dominated Kandahar.
Most readers will find Fergusson too forgiving towards the Taliban, but his contention that the west needs to deal with them stands because of the second part of his argument. Since their defeat, they have regrouped. They have been helped by the Pakistanis, who have covertly protected them; by westerners, whose use of air power has alienated Afghans; by the Afghan government, whose corruption has disgusted its people. The numbers of attacks on Nato forces, and the body count of both civilians and soldiers, continues to rise. They are the strongest force among the Pashtuns, and the Pashtuns are Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group. The northern, Persian-speaking ethnic groups who dominate Kabul, the government and business cannot govern the Pashtun areas.
America continues to fight the Taliban. But President Obama has said it will start pulling its troops out next year, and Afghanistan is supposed to be able to stand on its own feet by 2014. Among those who think about the country's future, there is a growing consensus that sometime before then America will start talking to the Taliban.
This book is probably on the right side of history. Sadly, it is also rather dull. Occasionally – as when Fergusson is talking to newly recruited policemen who tell him how much they hate America – it comes to life. However, it relies too much on colourless interviews with Taliban bigwigs who are keen to persuade foreigners that they disapproved of past excesses. The reader gains little sense of this beautiful, troubled country, which has given invaders – and received from them – so much grief.
Emma Duncan is the deputy editor of the Economist.
