WHAT strikes you first is the human predicament. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was detained for five years, the last US citizen to be held captive by the Afghan Taliban. His parents had still not seen him when they appeared in the sort of flags-and-family scene American television and politics love. His father — with his huge bushy beard and ponytail, hardly a photofit of your standard US serviceman’s dad — suggested his son might have to learn to speak English again and would need time to “decompress”; “if he comes up too fast, it could kill him.”

Difficult though Bergdahl’s reintegration will doubtless be though, the politics threatens to be many times more complicated. Sparks of controversy flew as soon as his liberation was announced — for the return of this prodigal son (some reports suggest he deserted) was the product of a deal; a prisoner exchange, no less, which may make it unprecedented in recent American diplomacy. And to say that it was not universally welcomed is to put it mildly.

It is not that the US has refused to deal with dubious characters and groups in the recent past. It may have done, but deniability was always enshrined in the terms. Here we have a deal, sanctioned by President Obama, under which one US soldier has been officially released in exchange for the five most senior Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

The deal to swap a US soldier for five Taliban prisoners may be evidence of the pragmatism underlying Obama’s foreign policy

This goes far beyond talking to the Taliban. For Republicans, including John McCain — but not just for them — this amounts to treating with terrorists, even betraying the sacred memory of those killed on 9/11. Republicans also suspect Obama of pulling a fast one by not giving Congress due notice.

The more farsighted may also discern the writing on the wall for Guantanamo itself. If five of its most “high value” occupants can be released with only the administration’s say-so, Obama may yet be able to honour his recently repeated promise to close the place he regards as “unconstitutional” before he leaves office. There will simply be no one worth keeping there any longer.

In this way, the exchange may be seen as a sign of the pragmatism that underlies the president’s much-criticised foreign policy. It is about as far from the trigger-happy dogmatism of George Bush as it is possible to be; proof that the ‘war on terror’ is no more. At the same time it should be observed that this is something only a second-term president could contemplate. Obama might also cite in his support the periodic (and often numerically one-sided) exchanges between Israel and the Palestinians, which say so much about the value Israelis place on the lives of their own.

None of these arguments, however, features in the justifications that have poured forth from the White House, the Pentagon and the state department. They have played down ideology, insisting Bergdahl’s release should be seen as a prisoner exchange of the sort that routinely takes place after a war. As such, it amounts to a statement that the war in Afghanistan is now over — not just for the US but also for the Taliban. It also implies the Taliban is now seen by the US administration as just another warring party, which to many Americans — and, indeed, many Afghans — it is not.

This is one reason why the exchange has caught flak not just from Republicans but also from Afghan leaders, who resent the appearance that this exchange was negotiated over their heads. The obvious rejoinder is that otherwise it might not have happened, and the single US prisoner of the Taliban would have remained a nagging reminder of unfinished American business in Afghanistan. With Osama bin Laden dead and western intervention drawing to a close, this is one less tie that binds.

—By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2014