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| Talks with the Taliban: The Road Ahead | |
By Farooq Ganderbali
Reports suggest that Pakistan is again playing mediator between the Afghan Taliban and US, this time in Qatar. Significantly, Pakistan’s ISPR has chosen to issue a statement that Islamabad welcomes the talks and that they should be “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led”. Contradiction of sorts, because the present round are going to take place between the US and Afghan Taliban and not the Afghan Government headed by President Ashraf Ghani. Unless of course Ghani has decided to let the Americans negotiate on his behalf!
Thus far, Ghani has relied, not on the US, but on China to get Pakistan to urge the Taliban to the negotiating table. To an extent he has succeeded, as Beijing held discussions with a lesser known Taliban leader, in both Kabul and Beijing. Late last year, two Afghan Taliban officials travelled with Pakistani officials to Beijing. In December 2014, China, the United States and Afghanistan held a first trilateral meeting to discuss the future of Afghanistan. Present at the meeting was Sun Yuxi, China’s special envoy to Afghanistan.
That Kabul is still trying the Chinese route is evidenced from the recent release and transfer of several Uighur militants in Afghanistan to China. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi who was in Pakistan recently said China would help mediate between the Afghan Taliban and Afghan government in talks. Subsequently, Pak Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif visited Afghanistan and told Ghani that Taliban had signaled its readiness for talks. The real conversation however, is yet to begin.
Barnett Rubin, a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation told Reuters that "Pakistan's attitude to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan has evolved ... China has played a role in Pakistan's evolution because China is very concerned about militants from Xinjiang province receiving training in Pakistan." There is little doubt that China is the new kid on the block and is using its economic power to muscle in on Afghanistan. Xinjiang security concerns are only a part of the story, the larger picture is that of Beijing extending its influence across Central and South Asia. That is the Chinese checkers move!
To start with both Pakistani and Afghan officials have said the Taliban leadership had signaled its readiness to begin talks soon. No further details are available. The talks would be held in Qatar. So, the game is afoot! But for how long? Past experience of US-Taliban negotiations indicate that Washington has tended to view the process as a one-off thing involving some give and take. There is no effort to take a long-term view. That is why it is necessary to have Kabul on board. Even if this be so, the process has to be transparent and done in Kabul, not in Qatar. Taliban was created in Pakistan, by Pakistan for the express purpose of taking over Afghanistan. If the Taliban leadership is realistic enough, it should ask for negotiations within Afghanistan.
The next question is whether the Taliban is a unified monolithic force, whose ready consent for negotiations and their likely outcome can be taken for granted. This is highly unlikely, as the Taliban is today a splintered organization. There are those who continue to fight, those who want peace and those most recently who have joined the ISIS. Therefore, negotiations will be long and tortuous and the issue of whether a final settlement will be agreeable to all groups will bedevil negotiators long after the ink has dried on the document.
At the end of the day, it is Pakistan which stands to gain. Stung by the Peshawar school attack last year, it faces considerable international pressure to do something about state sponsored terrorists. It is not easy cutting off the hydra-headed monster that the ISI so carefully created. To that end, the Kabul story has to be kept alive, to make Pakistan look reasonable. Little doubt that ISI and handlers of Taliban have told the Quetta Shura that it needs to get into talking mode. This position would be reinforced by propaganda that the Taliban’s 2014 spring offensive has been successful and that President Ashraf Ghani has been forced to sue for peace.
The present head of the Taliban’s Military Commission is Ibrahim Sadar. Although the Taliban have not confirmed the appointment of Ibrahim Sadar as the successor of Mullah Qayyum Zakir, his new function as the head of the military commission has been repeatedly mentioned in Taliban publications. Sadar is said to be close to Mullah Omar and Akhtar Mohammad Mansour Shah Mohammed. Sadar was released last year by Pak officials at Kabul’s request. He is well known as an ISI-backed Talib commander and his being named to head the military wing in place of Mullah Zakir means that ISI has reasserted its control over the Quetta Shura.
Therefore, in a strategic sense, the new dialogue with the Taliban is designed to keep Kabul engaged for the time being. With the US and China in the loop, however, the ISI will have to work out some sort of power sharing agreement that will give Taliban a stake in governing Afghanistan. There are several ways of accommodating the Taliban. One plan suggests that the Taliban be given Helmand, Kandhahar and a third province in exchange of peace. Another involves appointing a few Taliban nominees as ministers. And there are scores of other plans and actions points. At the end of the day, these are regressive measures which will drive Afghanistan into a deeper morass. There is a lesson to be learnt from the past as far as the Taliban is concerned.
Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s was progressive and modern state. Today, wracked by decades of civil war, it has become a struggling state. To revive the fortunes of this country, one needs a ‘warless’ economy, a forward-looking government and plenty of funds. All this will take time and energy. Thus, engaging the Taliban should be only one part of the overall strategy to bring peace to Afghanistan. At the moment, it appears that the Ghani government is putting all its eggs in one basket and hoping that it will yield results.
(The author is a Freelance Journalist and columnist)
(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the Scoop News)
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