Peace-meal: ceasefire in Afghanistan

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Hello and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Sports fans are getting ever more on board with surfing in Tokyo. This summer, it'll be part of the Olympics for the first time. Brazil's surfers have become some of the best, but perhaps not for long. At the grassroots level, the sport is slowly suffering. And when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? And how different were your options when you actually got into the workforce? Today's teens are facing an even starker divide between what's desirable and what's available. First up though, In Afghanistan this week, there's a rare feeling of hope. Hope that the relative peace that took hold over the weekend might be lasting. Talks between America and the Taliban seem to be heading toward a peace deal.

Psychologically, economically, socially, everything is destroyed.

Mahmoud Marhun, a lecturer at Kabul University, that even modest success would be significant for Afghans.

Now people are hoping if Taliban Peace make 10% of change, that will big change in their life.

Before the signing of the deal slated for later this week, both sides signed up to a reduction in hostilities. Short of a truce proper for America. An eventual deal would bring thousands of troops home and spell an end to the country's Longest war been over there?

19 years.

We're like.

Yesterday, President Donald Trump sounded a hopeful note.

They want to make a deal.

We want to make a to work out yet. Not least because Afghanistan's government hasn't been part of the negotiations and it's not even clear who in Kabul is in charge. In any case, the first step is a bit of trust building.

The American government and the Taliban have agreed a week long cessation of hostilities. Not a truce, they say, but a reduction of violence. And so far it's held.

Shashank Joshi is our defence editor.

We've seen some incidents of Taliban violence in some parts of the country, but even the Afghan Defense Ministry says don't judge the truce by that. You know, it's possible the orders didn't get through, it's possible there were misunderstandings, but on the whole, in the first day or so, it looks to be a reasonable success.

So not a truce proper.

What is the nature of the agreement?

It's a reduction in violence. So Taliban attacks are expected to fall about 80%. They're expected to avoid population centers, American bases, highways, that kind of thing. Now, this is different to the deal that we nearly saw signed, which collapsed last year, which would not have been nationwide. This one is nationwide and it would not have covered all Afghan troops. This one does cover all Afghan troops, but it still allows for the fact that, look, the Taliban is a big, messy organisation. Afghanistan is a big, complicated place. Many of the things that we see as Taliban violence are actually local tribal disputes or something happening beneath the surface. And so you have to allow for some possibility that you're not going to get a complete halt in bullets being fired.

So it's not a Precise aim at 80% so much as leaving a bit of margin for error.

And it leaves margin for error, not just because of the complexity of the Taliban and all of that, but also because neither side wants to bind their hands.

Right.

If violence falls by 75%, does Donald Trump want to say, I made a mistake and walk away? Does the Taliban want to tear everything up? No. Both sides realize they have to leave themselves some room for maneuver here. And so they're fudging the issue. They both want this. They both want to find an excuse to be able to proceed to the next step that will come on February 29th.

And so what's the nature of that next step? What does the eventual peace deal include?

So if a deal is signed, and it's expected to be signed in the Qatari capital of Doha, where lots of the diplomacy between America and the Taliban has taken place. It will have several elements. The first One is the US draws down troops. It will go down from 12,000 to about 8,600. So enough to keep some stuff going, but not enough to necessarily fight right across the country at the same level. They'll also set out a schedule for how they will draw down troops further beyond that point. In exchange for that, what the Taliban say is they will cut their ties to Al Qaeda. They won't allow terrorists to use Afghanistan for attacks abroad. And this is the really important bit. The Taliban will meet the Afghan government, but not only the Afghan government. They'll have what's called an intra Afghan dialogue, which is an artful term designed to get around the fact the Taliban always said, we're never gonna talk to this puppet regime that's just a pawn of the Americans. They will talk to a representative group of Afghans, which will include the government, but it will also include opposition civil society, media, and that will hash out the basis of a future Afghan state.

But when it comes time for that.

Intra Afghan dialogue, the government must be involved in some way. And there's a bit of confusion around who's actually in charge.

Right there is. We had presidential elections last year. They were disputed. And last week, the Electoral Commission of Afghanistan declared President Ashraf Ghani, the incumbent, the winner of that campaign. But Abdullah Abdullah, his opponent, said, no, I dispute this result. He declared that he would form a parallel government. He's begun appointing governors to the north of the country, a process that could be very fraught with risk. And the big issue now is how will this competition for legitimacy impact the peace process? Qaani has the support of outsiders. You know, India has granted him support, for example, and recognized his government. But this could still be very risky. What if Abdullah Abdullah says, I'm not going to take part in your intra Afghan dialogue. I'm not going to sit as part of a delegation to meet the Taliban that is set by Ashraf Ghani. What if the country's elites fracture more seriously? Now, these officials who are going to meet the Taliban will theoretically meet in their own personal capacities, not as government officials or other kinds of officials. But it's possible that this political chaos at the top of Afghanistan will not only distract the government, but will also make it very hard for the rest of Afghanistan, the non Taliban bit of Afghanistan, to speak to the Islamists with one coherent voice.

All of this discussion so far has been around peace in the round.

As things progress, what is it that.

The Taliban actually wants Besides a cessation of hostilities?

Well, it's not clear, to be absolutely honest. We saw an extraordinary op ed in the New York Times last week by the Taliban's deputy leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, a man who is responsible for the Haqqani network, a faction of the Taliban that is most commonly known not for peace, but for very effective suicide bombings in Kabul. And he said with a straight face, writing in the New York Times, you know, America's newspaper of record, the rights of women that are granted by Islam, from the right to education to the right of work, are protected. And we've had Taliban figures making these kinds of noises that, look, this is not your father's Taliban. We're not the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist, banning music and kites and all sorts of leisure activities in the 1990s. We are more pragmatic, we're more flexible. We've realized times have moved on. No one really believes them. Right. They feel you're going to start talking to the Afghan government, American troops will leave, and then when the last American is out, you say bye. And then you reveal your true colors and stamp your authority on the process because, of course, you have all the guns and all the American guns are gone. The Taliban isn't what it was. That's probably true. Their connections to Al Qaeda have probably softened and changed over the years. Some experts would argue, others would disagree, I should say. But overall, I think no one really knows whether they want a resurrection of the kind of Islamic emirate they had from 96, or whether they can really live with constitutional democracy and individual rights of the kind that have been enshrined in Afghanistan for the past decade.

We've kind of been around this loop before, though, with talks that failed, well, spectacularly at the last minute. What do you think about things this time, the prospects for it to succeed and what would happen if once again it failed?

I think that they probably will get to the signing of the peace deal and we will almost certainly see the big initial drop of American troops down to 8,500 that's promised in it. Last time it was a series of unfortunate circumstances. An attack that killed an American soldier, a strong pushback from Donald Trump's right wing base. That seems to be somewhat more muted this time. But of course, that's no guarantee that things stabilize. That's no guarantee that the intra Afghan dialogue yields any kind of lasting settlement. If that doesn't happen, I can't see Donald Trump, you know, months out from an election or Even after a reelection or indeed any of his democratic successes, sending back thousands of American troops to Afghanistan. Not when the Pentagon agrees that their priority is China. China and China. I think what would happen is they might send some bombers over, they might send special forces, but other countries in the region, Pakistan, Iran, India, would also get sucked in backing their own favourite factions within the country, as they did in the 1990s. And that we'd see a lot of instability, but no return to the kind of big, heavy footprint, US intervention of the past 18 years.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thanks.

The sport of surfing is riding a wave of popularity. Its already burgeoning audience will rise further later this year in Tokyo, when surfers appear at the Summer Olympics for the first time. Right now, one country dominates the professional scene. Brazil. But not, it seems, for much longer.

So from the beginning of professional surfing in the 1970s and 80s, two countries always dominated the US and Australia.

Sarah Maslin is the Economist's Brazil correspondent.

Because of its vast coastline and amazing beaches, there were always some really good Brazilian surfers, but they never made it to the very top in the professional circuit. That all changed in 2014, when a young Brazilian surfer called Gabriel Medina won the world championship in Hawaii and caused an international sensation.

This has got to be a proud moment for not just Gabriel Medina, not just Brazil, but really for all of surfing.

This, his win, was part of a new era of Brazilian surfers that's called the Brazilian Storm. Brazilians have won four out of the last six world championships, and they've really started to raise the profile of professional surfing in Brazil.

And so what was it about Mr. Medgina and the Brazilian storm that set them apart? Why did this big change happen?

Medina himself is known for being cutthroat, competitive and daring in his style. But he's part of this generation that got good because they considered themselves professional athletes. These surfers started taking English classes and hiring marketing coaches to broaden their fan base and potential sponsors, which is really important for surfers to make enough money to have a professional career. I caught Gabriel Medgina at a press conference for a new documentary by Globo, the biggest TV network in Brazil. A kind of rags to riches tale about his journey. From a kid interested in surfing from a tiny town to a world superstar. I asked him what he thinks is behind the success of Brazilian surfers both in and out of the water.

We grew up like this, giving the.

Maximum every day to arrive where we are now.

And so Brazilians have now kind of come to dominate the sport. You think this is Brazil's golden era for surfing?

Surfing in general is really having a moment. It will be included for the first time in the Tokyo Olympics this year. And the World Surf League just opened its office here in Sao Paulo, Brazil. But I went to Gabriel's hometown, Marezillas, which is a beautiful white sand beach town with these rolling waves. I spoke to a lot of people on both the lower and higher rungs of the sport who are worried that the conditions that allowed Brazil to become so dominant are starting to weaken.

How so?

They're worried that the Brazilian storm could blow over within a few years because of economic problems that are plaguing the surf industry.

Well, why would that be though? If there's media interest, if they are the darlings of the sport, all of the conditions seem to be there for this to continue.

The surfing industry has been struggling with economic problems for some time now. The industry is basically funded by these massive surfwear brands, brands like Hurley and Billabong and Quicksilver that mostly sell clothing associated with the sport. Quicksilver and Billabong both filed for bankruptcy in recent years. Another apparel maker, Hurley, was sold by Nike last year and has since announced that it's going to get rid of its pro surf team. That was a big alarm bell in the surfing industry because these big surf brands basically finance the careers of professional surfers and also young upcomers trying to make it into the professional world. I recently spoke to another pro surfer named Miguel Pupo, a world class surfer, but someone who's in the top 30 rather than the top three. And he was talking about how it's really tough for them, even though he's a professional surfer, to make a living. He said, you know, imagine being one of the 30 best football or basketball players in the world and not having a salary.

So in the absence of that sponsorship and those kinds of salaries, what options are open? What can keep the Brazilian storm storming?

So the success of the Brazilians has really inspired a whole younger generation of surfers. Equally talented, but they're struggling to find the kind of sponsorship that would push them into the professional circuit. In Marazias, I spoke to caio Costa, a 15 year old who learned to surf in the same area as Gabriel Medina and spent a couple years at the surfing academy that Medina set up to try to help young surfers. He won the under 16 division of Brazil's amateur championship last year. But he told me that in the absence of funding, he's having to go door to door to businessmen from Sao Paulo who vacation in Madizillas for help buying surfboards, which cost around $500, and plane tickets to the qualifying rounds that could put him on track for a professional career.

But that's still not the kind of grassroots funding that people are saying it's going to need if a real sort of generation is going to come up. Right. You can't have businessmen just bankrolling everybody who wants to get into the sport.

Exactly. So everyone in the surf industry here in Brazil and elsewhere in the world says that the industry really has to come together and talk about a way out of this crisis. Surfers often mention what happened with other sports in Brazil, like Formula One, racing and tennis, which had individual superstars that made the sports really popular for a few years and then virtually disappeared. In order for that to not happen with surfing, there really has to be some sort of a game plan between the crazy surf obsessed beach guys and the businessmen running these surf brands and potentially some of these other brands outside of the surfing industry to find a way to support these young, talented athletes. Coming up.

Thank you very much for joining us, Sarah.

Thanks so much, Jason.

Most of us start thinking about the world of work in early childhood. We might want to become doctors, farmers, even astronauts. But the reality of work doesn't always match expectations.

There are of course, many people who do work as doctors, farmers, and indeed a few as astronauts.

Philip Coggin writes the Economist's Bartleby column on work and management.

But the vast majority of teenagers have unrealistic expectations and they're not focusing on the kind of jobs that are likely to be created in larger numbers over the next 20 years.

And so what kind of jobs do they think they want? Which ones are popular among teenagers?

The most popular are very well known ones like doctors, teachers and lawyers. The OECD did a survey of 15 year olds across 41 countries, part of their subpisa survey of education. And they find that this clustering is very strong. So 53% of girls want one of the top 10 jobs and 47% of boys want one of those jobs. And that's gone up since 2000 by several percentage points.

And why do you suppose there is that clustering around the most popular jobs?

I think it's because it's what teenagers are aware of. So they'll meet doctors and teachers in their daily lives and lawyers as the kind of job that's well represented on tv. If you are a teenager, you won't have experienced a job market in all its complexity. And so you won't spot the kind of jobs like user support technician, which is one of the fastest growing jobs in society. There's an element too of youthful optimism. So when I was a kid, I wanted to be international cricketer or Prime Minister. A lot of kids now still want to be sportsmen, pop stars or designers. These are the kind of glamorous jobs they want to be, but obviously only a very small proportion of them can ever aspire to that status.

Right. So more realistically, it might be something more like user support technician.

The technology sector is one of the two fastest growing sectors for jobs, and this is obviously a very wide selection of posts. But there's a problem there in that even the top performing girls in science and maths are much less likely to want to apply for jobs in this area. And part of that may well be that they are not encouraged to do so. So, remarkably, only 35.5% of undergraduate STEM science, technology, engineering and maths degrees in the States are taken by women. And then when they go through to the employment market, in some fields, a very small proportion of jobs are taken by women. So only 12% of cloud computing jobs are occupied by women. The counterpoint is the other big growing sector is healthcare. And their women are much more involved in medicine, for example, and home and personal care. They're much more involved too. The other snag is that women don't tend to rise to the top of those industries. So in America, only a third of healthcare executives are women, so they occupy the lower paid ranks, but they don't all rise to the top of the industry.

But how much of this effect is that these teenagers aspirations actually do kind of reflect the jobs market that they're getting into.

Well, I think it's not reasonable to expect teenagers to understand the market totally, and it's up to career advisors, universities, governments to steer them in the right direction. And there's a problem in the healthcare sector in that boys are more reluctant to go for some of these jobs. 83% of social care workers in Britain are female, for example. Now, it may be that boys regard caring as a feminine trait, not a masculine one, but again, this is an inefficiency in the market. If we've got a large number of elderly people coming through who need to be looked after, that's going to create a lot of jobs. And if boys who don't and aren't going to make it in the science and technology industry are ignoring the healthcare industry, again, we are not allocating resources efficiently and they may end up without a job because they weren't considered a personal care sector.

So how to fix it, then? If it's a matter of allocating resources efficiently, as the economist within you would like to do, what's to be done?

There are two things that need to be done. The first is broader education. You know, it's up to people like us to make it clear what the kind of jobs are. It's up to teachers, it's up to university guidance counsellors to help teenagers find the right jobs. And also it's up to the government to try and encourage people to move into those sectors. And that can be by, you know, maybe paying a bit more in the healthcare sector where we need the jobs, or trying to find ways of encouraging more girls to apply for science and technology courses.

And in the meantime, some kids are going to have to confront some unfulfilled expectations, as you did, I guess, with the international cricketing. But it's not too late for you to become Prime Minister.

No, though it's probably a great escape for the country if I don't become. But at least I've achieved one of my ambitions, which is to appear on the Intelligence podcast.

Phil, thanks for your time.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.