Kabul wants quartet to label Taliban ‘irreconcilable’

Envoy believes Pakistan can play key role ‘in support of peace’ in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan wants the Taliban to be declared ‘irreconcilable’ as they have publicly refused to engage in talks, the country’s top envoy to Pakistan said on Sunday.

Ambassador Omar Zakhilwal’s comments came ahead of a key meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) which has been pushing for a political solution to a long, deadly insurgency in Afghanistan.



Official and diplomatic sources have confirmed to The Express Tribune the quartet, which is made up of Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and the United States, is scheduled to meet on May 18 in Islamabad. Special envoys of the four countries are likely to attend the meeting, according to a diplomatic source. Currently, a debate is ongoing in Afghanistan on whether or not Kabul should take part in the meeting as some government officials have little hope from the quartet process.

The QCG efforts received a serious blow after the Taliban refused to engage in ‘direct talks’ with Afghan government officials – and instead mounted their annual ‘spring offensive’. A deadly Taliban bombing in the heart of Kabul further diminished peace prospects as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani took up the gauntlet and decided to fight the Taliban on the battlefield.



“We expect the QCG meeting to agree on implementation of the roadmap the group had agreed upon in its meeting on February 6,” Ambassador Zakhilwal said while referring to the quartet call for the Taliban to shun violence and join direct talks by the first week of March.

“The roadmap is precisely about the steps the QCG members were to take in their respective domains both during peace talks, if they commenced, as well as if the Taliban refused to join talks. Now since the Taliban have publicly refused to join talks and opted for more violence the second scenario is applicable,” Dr Zakhilwal told The Express Tribune by phone from Kabul on Sunday.

“They must be declared ‘irreconcilable’ and action taken against them as was agreed in the roadmap,” he added.

Ambassador Zakhiwal travelled to Kabul following his meeting with army chief General Raheel Sharif where they agreed to reopen the Torkham border crossing. The border remained closed for four days after Afghan security forces objected to the fencing of the border by Pakistani authorities.

The Afghan envoy evaded questions about the issues he had discussed with Gen Raheel other than the border closure. “We did discuss some concrete steps for moving forward. These were precisely some of the issues I had discussed with Gen Raheel Sharif in my last meeting a couple of days ago,” he said but did not share any specific issue.

Asked if Kabul still wanted to pursue dialogue, Ambassador Zakhilwal said his country had never shut doors on peace negotiation as that “continues to be a more sensible and responsible way”. “However, unabated violence erodes public and political support for peace talks and therefore the doors for peace talks cannot remain open indefinitely, particularly, for talks without preconditions,” he added.



Asked if Pakistan still has a role in the Afghan peace process, Ambassador Zakhilwal said he still believed Islamabad could play an important and constructive role in support of peace in Afghanistan. “I also believe Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership genuinely desires to move forward in that direction, and hope that institutions downward are in line with that thinking and supportive of those positions.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2016.