The Doha talks with the Taliban have diverted Washington’s efforts away from the far more important negotiations among Afghanistan’s political elite that will actually determine whether the country’s unity and constitutional system endures past 2014. Afghanistan’s history suggests that any successful political accommodation of its different ethnic factions in 2014 will be impossible without incorporating the interests of those influential leaders and commanders currently or formerly associated with Jamiat-e Islami. Jamiat remains one of Afghanistan’s oldest and most influential Tajik-dominated political parties, forged as a political-military organization that eventually formed the core of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. As...