We should talk to the Taliban only from a position of strength not weakness

David Miliband has become the latest to suggest that the Coalition must talk to sections of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The foreign secretary said it was necessary to build “an inclusive political settlement” which included former insurgents who could be persuaded to renounce violence. And he made an increasingly familiar distinction between ”hard-line ideologues”/jihadists and more moderate groups who are currently involved in the insurgency, but who could be ‘drawn into a political process’.

Miliband’s speech was part of a concerted government push on Afghanistan. International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander, told the Today programme this morning that a focus on dialogue was one of the lessons of the British experience of Northern Ireland: “I think people recognise from the experience of places like Northern Ireland that it is necessary to put military pressure on the Taliban while at the same time holding out the prospect that there can be a political process that can follow”; military operations, he noted, were ‘only part of the solution’.

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But Miliband and Alexander are missing that what Northern Ireland really shows is that there is a huge difference between talking to terrorists who are on the crest of a wave and those who are starting to tread water.