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Policymakers, regional players, and the international community must heed the lessons from Afghanistan’s failure to seize, or at least fully explore, the ripe moments for negotiations on a political settlement. In Afghanistan, that failure concluded with the loss of a democratically elected republic government to the very faction it refrained from engaging in negotiations. In Israel, failure to contain the conflict through diplomacy and negotiated settlement is laying the groundwork for a larger conflict that threatens to engulf the broader Middle East.

Bleak political realities and flashpoints of conflict often paradoxically create opportunities for diplomatic breakthroughs. The art of foreign policy statecraft lies in seizing these moments and transforming crises into catalysts for change.

Large-scale prisoner releases and escapes will invigorate the global Salafi-jihadi movement at a time when it has ample opportunity to expand. Recent prisoner exchanges, escapes, and mass releases are returning thousands of insurgents to battlefields in West Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia and will accelerate the growth of several insurgencies.

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