There are Two Sides to Every Coin: An Analysis of the U.S. - Taliban Peace Negotiations (2018-2019) A reassessment of William I. Zartman's ripeness theory with the Afghanistan conflict as a case study

Abstract

Negotiation is one of the most commonly employed methods in conflict resolution. In recent decades, scholars, policymakers, or whoever interested in resolving conflicts, have deliberated about the right timing for such negotiation efforts. In other words: when is a conflict ‘ripe’ for the initiation of peace negotiations? The existing ripeness theory, made especially popular by William I. Zartman, is crucial in understanding when conflicting parties consider negotiations as preferable to continued fighting. In 2015, Zartman published an article with case studies among which he presented the Afghanistan conflict as a negative case for ripeness, seen from his ripeness theory. Scilicet: the time would not have been ‘ripe’ for peace negotiations. However, since the beginning of 2018, official rounds of negotiations have been taking place between the U.S. and the Taliban. At the same time, the very same elements mentioned as the reason for the presumed absence of ‘ripeness’, as identified by Zartman in 2015, are still identifiable if analyzing the U.S. – Taliban peace negotiations. This thesis argues that this indicates shortcomings in the ripeness theory. Not only there seems to be a system error in the ripeness theory because the model struggles to cope with multi-party conflicts, but namely the ripeness theory lacks the ability to be interdisciplinary and consequently overlooks the importance of the historical and political dimension. This thesis argues that it is exactly the historical and political developments that are significant contributing factors to ‘ripening’ the conflict and hence, explain the reason why peace negotiations were able to sprout from the Afghanistan conflict, despite Zartman’s conclusion the time was not ripe to do so.