Afghan peace talks

For more than three decades the Afghans have been at war with themselves, and there has been no clear victor. And for nearly the same period there have been attempts and moves, some quite serious, to bring this fratricidal conflict to an end through negotiated peace, but till to date that hasn't happened. Once again a feeling of déjà vu permeates the Afghan national landscape as reports surface that the Afghan government is in peace talks with the Taliban. Last week, the Afghan Taliban were said to have met the Americans at Doha, Qatar where a part of the Afghan Taliban leadership has taken residence. In June 2013 too such an interlocution took place, but failed to achieve anything as the then Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, questioned the diplomatic legitimacy of the host country to allow the Taliban to open office and fly their flag and thus blew off the palm the possibility of national reconciliation. Once again the Doha peace process seems to be afoot. Quoting sources close to the Taliban the BBC says 'top leadership of Taliban in Afghanistan had a green signal to hold dialogue with the Afghan government'. Earlier, Pakistani officials had indicated this possibility - though both the United States and the Taliban leadership denied, but confirmed by the same media network that Taliban leader Qari Din Muhammad would be shortly visiting Islamabad. He was here some days ago, after he had led a Taliban delegation to Beijing. Doha or Beijing, which of the two finally emerges as venue for Taliban talks with Afghanistan the latter as the possible venue is more likely, given the Chinese government's first-ever open offer to help the cause of Afghan national reconciliation.
As to what makes the latest move for Afghan national reconciliation more tenable than ever before, broadly speaking it could be 'the idea whose time has come'. On the ground there are new realities, a blend of positive developments both national and regional, which tend to morph into a long-awaited paradigm shift to bring an end to the war and restore peace in Afghanistan. Of these, the most critical is the new elected leadership in Kabul, which has the desired vision and will to shed ethnic-tribal mindset that was so much the bane of Hamid Karzai's governance. Afghanistan comes first, that seems to be the motto of the Ghani-Abdullah duo as it shuffles its cards to obtain conditions for effective governance delivery. Then, there is this war fatigue, which has caught up with the insurgents. They have not been defeated, but they are no victors either. Their cause celebre of fighting to expel foreigners from Afghanistan too has lost much of its appeal given that the US-led coalition's combat forces have left and President Obama now calls them insurgents, and no more terrorists. No less daunting challenge to their cause should be the resurfacing anti-Soviet vintage Afghan Mujahideen, should a situation demand some of them have offered to take on the Taliban in the battlefield. Or, maybe the nationalists among the Taliban, and they are now in majority, are scared of being dubbed as the foot soldiers of the Islamic State, whose presence in Afghanistan has been indicated by the killing of IS leader Abdul Rauf in Helmand province in a drone attack last month.
But what lends the game-changing momentum to the pace of Afghan national reconciliation process is the Kabul government's growing trust in its counterpart in Islamabad that Pakistan is totally and unreservedly committed to an all-inclusive Afghan-led and Afghan-owned solution. Kabul has come to believe that among the Afghan forces on both sides of the national divide Pakistan has no favourites. And it appears that the Kabul rulers too have decided not to plant proxies on the Pakistani soil, promising co-operation in hunting down the terrorists who having committed violence in Pakistan find refuge in Afghanistan. No wonder then the Afghan Taliban have indicated "very clear signals", which Pakistan has communicated to the Kabul government, to sit with the Ashraf Ghani men on the negotiating table. All of this is indeed a heart-warming development, but there are forces and factions also that would spare no effort to derail the Afghan peace process. Of the outside powers that would leave nothing to chance is India, which has been historically exploiting its position with Kabul rulers to sow seeds of mistrust between Afghanistan and Pakistan. With China having emerged as an important facilitator of Afghan national reconciliation it would be India's one more 'compulsion' to use its camouflaged assets, as well as its consulates, in Afghanistan to keep its anti-Pakistan pot on the front burner. It is our earnest hope that as they move towards the negotiating table both the Afghan government and Taliban leaders keep an eye on this mischief monger. For the rest of it the time is ripe and the prospects unmistakably bright.