In search of a key

Afghanistan has been mired in bloody conflict seemingly for centuries. Before the Western powers used it as the cockpit from which was fought The Great Game tribal warfare and blood feuds were endemic. In the 20^th century there was little respite, and so on into the 21^st with no end in sight. There have been countless efforts to resolve the multi-layered and intractable tensions that underpin warfare, all have failed, and some miserably so. With shifts in the geopolitical tectonics other players come onstage and today Russia and China are the latest to seek an elusive key. Both are permanent members of the UN Security Council and both have a vested interest in seeing a peaceful and stable Afghanistan. As has Pakistan. Now, emerging from trilateral talks in Moscow on Tuesday 27^th December there is the suggestion — not yet a proposal — that the Afghan Taliban be taken off the UN sanctions list as a way forward in facilitating a dialogue between the government of Afghanistan and ‘insurgent groups’.



Inclusion and exclusion have been major recent impediments to a move forwards. Who is and who is not at the table, who is willing to talk to who and who not — all bedevil any process. The Afghan government was not at the tripartite talks — but China, Russia and Pakistan have agreed that it would be invited to future moots. There is a shared concern at the rise of Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan, but equally a need to ‘unstick’ an eternally stalled process. It is uncertain how the US would react to any move to take people it sees as terrorists having an international and not only regional imprint, off the UN proscribed klist. Such a stratagem has not been previously proposed, but the reality is that any move without the Afghan Taliban aboard is going to mean that the ship is not going to sail.

For Russia and China this is green-field diplomacy as far as Afghanistan is concerned. Both have much to gain, and both will be keen to see fences mended between Kabul and Islamabad. Any key is better than no key. Keep looking.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2016.

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