ISLAMABAD - Islamabad this week will hold three-day talks
with Kabul on achieving peace in Afghanistan, while Pakistan’s envoy to
the war-torn country said they hope to persuade Afghan insurgent groups
to pursue peace but worry opposition from anti-Taliban groups could mar
their efforts.
A delegation of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council
led by Chairman Salahuddin Rabbani, a son of late Burhanuddin Rabbani,
will arrive in Islamabad today (Monday), to meet President Asif Ali
Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.
“Mr Rabbani was
invited by Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to visit Pakistan to hold
talks with the relevant authorities with regard to peace and
reconciliation process in Afghanistan,” a foreign ministry statement
said on Sunday.
The delegation, which will also hold talks with
the foreign minister and the military leadership, is expected to give
Islamabad a road map of how it wants its influential neighbour to help
end the war with the Taliban.
Similar talks were derailed last
year in September with the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the
former head of the High Peace Council, by a suicide bomber who purported
to be a Taliban peace envoy. Afghan officials lashed out at Islamabad
over the killing, saying it was planned in Pakistan and carried out by a
Pakistani with a bomb in his turban.
Pakistan denied the charges
and blamed Afghan refugees living in Pakistan for the murder. The
Afghan government later named Rabbani’s son, Salahuddin, as the new
chief peace envoy. Efforts to end the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan
have gained a new urgency with US-led Nato forces due to draw combat
troops out of the country by the end of 2014.
Speaking just ahead
of the expected visit of Afghan peace council, Islamabad’s ambassador
to Kabul Muhammad Sadiq said on Sunday that Pakistan hopes to persuade
Afghan insurgent groups, including the lethal Haqqani network, to pursue
peace but he expressed fears that resistance from political factions
opposed to the Taliban could undermine reconciliation efforts.
In
an interview, the envoy said: “The prime minister of Pakistan had
appealed to all insurgent groups to engage in negotiations,” said Sadiq.
“We will encourage all insurgents. We will encourage the entire armed
opposition of Afghanistan to participate in peace negotiations with the
Afghan government.”
He also suggested US efforts would be better
directed at engaging insurgent groups – rather than attempting to defeat
them by launching military strikes against their leaders. “Afghans are
much more united in wanting to join the reconciliation process than they
were two years ago,” he said.
“But still there are very important
people who fought against the Taliban and are not still ready to talk
and negotiate with the Taliban. And we are working with them.” Sadiq was
referring to former members of the Northern Alliance, which toppled the
Taliban in 2001 with US backing. Some now occupy government positions
or are in the opposition.
President Hamid Karzai set up the High
Peace Council comprising members of diverse Afghan ethnic and political
groups to try to ease mistrust between the Taliban and its traditional
enemies and forge a peace deal. The task has gained urgency as most Nato
combat troops prepare to withdraw at the end of 2014 and hand over
security to Afghan government forces.
Lack of progress has fuelled
fears of a civil war and some Afghans worry the Taliban will try and
seize power again if no comprehensive political settlement is reached
before then. Afghanistan’s government has failed to secure direct talks
with the Taliban and no significant progress is expected before 2014, a
senior Afghan official closely involved with reconciliation efforts told
Reuters on Friday.
Afghan officials have often seen Pakistan as a
reluctant partner in attempts to broker talks, saying Islamabad is long
on promises and short on action. Kabul also accuses Pakistan’s spy
agency of using groups like the Haqqani network as proxies to counter
the influence of rival India in Afghanistan. Islamabad, which has a long
history of ties to Afghan militant groups, denies the allegations.
The
Haqqani faction, allied with the Taliban and allegedly operating on
northwest Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, is seen as the most
dangerous Afghan militant group, blamed for high-profile attacks in
Kabul and other cities.
Afghanistan said in August it believed a
top commander of the group, Badruddin Haqqani, had been killed in a US
drone strike in Pakistan. Pakistan has resisted US pressure to pursue
the Haqqanis – seen as the most implacable US foe in Afghanistan –
arguing that negotiations stand a better chance of delivering stability.
“I
think normally with insurgents one thing is very clear – that deaths
have not weakened them because they replace commanders very quickly.
They’re able to replace them in a day or so,” said Sadiq, suggesting the
Americans should have learned from the Russian experience in
Afghanistan in the 1980s. “They have people. By killing their people you
cannot weaken them. The Soviets killed 1 million, 2 million people. It
didn’t weaken the insurgency against them.”
Afghanistan is known
to want access to Taliban leaders belonging to the so-called Quetta
Shura, or council, named after the Pakistani city where they are
believed to be based, an issue the peace council is likely to raise.
An
official with the council said it would also be pushing Islamabad to
repatriate Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s former second in
command, in detention in Pakistan. Afghan officials believe Baradar
could serve as an effective conduit for negotiations with Taliban
leaders if sent to Kabul. An Afghan official told Reuters that Pakistan
had promised to hand over Baradar in September.
Pakistan denies
giving sanctuary to insurgents and says no Taliban leaders are in
Quetta. Asked what Pakistan would be willing to do to push the
struggling reconciliation process forward, Sadiq said: “Expectations
should be reasonable about what we can do because Pakistan and Taliban
are not one party. We don’t control them, we don’t give them weapons, we
do not give money to them.”
Sadiq said Afghanistan should strive
to make sure any government that runs the country should include all
ethnic groups and parties to preclude any repeat of past turmoil. “A
representative government will automatically help in reducing the
insurgency, reducing the tension among ethnicities, it will go a long
way in preventing a civil war.”