The US-Taliban Peace Deal: A Buberian Analysis of the Declaration’s Language

Abstract

In this paper, we use critical interpretive and rhetorical analysis, informed by three theoretical concepts from Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, i.e., I-It-Thou, Reciprocity, and Interhuman, to analyze the US-Taliban peace declaration document which was released after the actors signed a Peace Deal in February 2020. The analysis revealed that the document’s text embodies a nondynamic, non-dialogic and non-reciprocal spirit; creates It-It and I-It relationships; and does not extend the democratic and creative deliberative spaces which, according to Buber, every dialogue must aim to accomplish. The analysis further revealed that the declaration’s aim tends to be to obtain a consensus/closure, i.e., to end the physical confrontation between Taliban and American troops, and not to attend to the underlying historical, cultural, and political structural forces which had created, and will continue to create, the conditions for the protracted conflict. Implications of the Deal for the Afghan people and for regional and global peace have been discussed. Moreover, we hope to bring the philosophy of Martin Buber, an eminent dialogue thinker yet little-known in Pakistan, to the peace and conflict literature produced within the country, and open it up for a critically engaged criticism and commentary. Finally, since the declaration is only a four-page text and its analysis is understandably limited in methodological and epistemological scope, suggestions for future research have been offered.