Piecemeal peace

The outgoing US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has confirmed contacts with the Afghan Taliban, albeit insists that the "outreach talks" with them are "very preliminary at this point". But for the Afghan President Hamid Karzai's public disclosure a day before, about the Americans' engagement with Taliban - which he felt was at cross purposes with his policy and harmful to Afghan unity - the Americans might not have confirmed these contacts for some more time.
The "foreign forces, especially the United States, are carrying out these talks themselves," the Afghan president told reporters in Kabul, as if he was not in the picture. President Karzai felt hurt and was angry as he described the United States "an occupying force" and that "[t]he nations (coalition countries) are here for their own national interests...They are using our country". Not that the Americans took his diatribe lying down; US ambassador in Kabul Karl Eikenberry instantly retorted by calling Afghan president's comment "hurtful and inappropriate".
Clearly, there has come to obtain a perceptional mismatch between the Americans and the Karzai government on the issue of initiating the peace process with the Taliban. While the United States wants to confine contacts with the Taliban leadership, the Karzai administration is for talks with all factions, including the Haqqani network, Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami and the Salfis group, which has presence in provinces of Nuristan and Kunar in the northeast of Afghanistan, through the High Peace Council, established by President Karzai early this year. And Pakistan is inclined to go along with Karzai's formula.
A few days ago he was in Islamabad where he and Prime Minister Gilani jointly chaired the first meeting of the Afghan-Pakistan peace commission that is expected to strengthen the reconciliation process in Afghanistan. By 'patronising' the Taliban exclusively at the cost of sidelining all other stakeholders, the American plan carries the inherent risk of splitting up the Afghan polity. May be the Obama administration would like to project the peace-with-Taliban as a curtain-raiser for its announced troop drawdown - to counterbalance the Pentagon generals insistence on continued military adventure. But Afghanistan will be a net loser in any case. Equally frightful is the US move of Taliban-centred peace process for Pakistan; a victorious Taliban in Afghanistan is bound to boost the fighting morale of insurgents in its border areas. If at all peace is returning to Afghanistan after 10 years of war - that was forced on Afghans for none of their faults - it should be comprehensive and all-embracing. Such a piecemeal peace as the Obama administration envisages is likely to trigger yet another round of civil war in that country.
Of course there were reports that the Americans have met with one Tayeb Agha, a former confidant of Mulla Omar, in their effort to reach Mulla Omar. Then there were also reports that some kind of middle-level meetings between the Americans and Mulla Omar's interlocutors took place in Qatar and Germany. But what seems to have given a catalytic kick to these contacts is the disappearance of Osama bin Laden from the centre stage, engendering the possibility, and rightly so, that the Taliban can be weaned away from al Qaeda. The fact remains that the Afghan Taliban became the victim of their cultural pride not to surrender their guest Osama bin Laden, they had no hand whatsoever in staging the 9/11 attacks in the United States. But as war raged in Afghanistan it's not the Taliban alone but the entire Afghan population that has suffered.
Therefore, it's only just and fair that peace talks should involve all Afghan factions. The UN logic of separating the Taliban from the al Qaeda is perfectly fine - since 9/11, much water has flown under the bridge and there is every reason to believe that the duo must have evolved over time and acquired independent worldviews. Not too unsurprisingly then, it's natural to ask if the Americans and their allies can think of striking peace with the Afghan Taliban, why the Pakistan government should not follow suit.
Whatever we have in terms of turmoil in our tribal areas is essentially the aftermath of the UN-mandated invasion of Afghanistan. Without the simultaneity of the peace parleys with the Taliban on both sides of the Durand Line, there would be no peace on either side, the border being so porous with the same people straddled on both sides.
More importantly, should the Americans be through with their adventure in Afghanistan, their focus on Pakistan is bound to sharpen, particularly in the context of their misguided impression that the country's nuclear assets can fall into the wrong hands, although US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff insists that Pakistan nuclear assets are quite safe and secure. To sit back and to be unconcerned is not an option for Pakistan. The government must become part of the Afghan reconciliation process, irrespective of whether it is between the US and Taliban or under the aegis of Afghan government's High Peace Council.