ISLAMABAD:
As the US-led Nato forces in Afghanistan are preparing for a scheduled drawdown next month, President Hamid Karzai’s administration has stepped up its efforts to win over Taliban insurgents as part of its ‘reconciliation and reintegration plan’.
Over the last eight years, hundreds of insurgents have renounced violence for a financially-stable and peaceful life under the Kabul initiative, which has the full backing of the United States, according to the Afghan media.
Thirty to 50 insurgents, including key commanders surrender to the authorities every day in return for lucrative financial packages that also include jobs in the Afghan security forces and livelihood projects in their own areas.
Most of the militants joined the peace process after they gave in to the authorities in the provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan.Samangan, Nuristan, Herat, Ghor, Helmand, Badakhshan and Baghlan.
A spokesperson for the Afghan spy agency said earlier this month that about 15,000 Taliban have surrendered in the last two months. “The militants have realised that they are not going to win,” said Lotfullah Mashal, the spokesperson for the Afghan National Directorate of Security. “We are providing jobs and security to those who are giving up and switching sides,” he said. “We are committed to protect those who surrender.”
Karzai’s ‘pay-for-peace plan’ was launched last year with $140 million in the July 2010 London Conference on Afghanistan, where Saudi Arabia had also pledged $150 to finance efforts for restoring peace in the war-torn country.
After the conference, President Karzai set up a 70-member Afghan High Peace Council, headed by former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, to negotiate terms of surrender plan with the Taliban. And it has been doing this successfully since. Other than this, tribal elders have also been hired by the government at the local level to help with the peace process.
The US-led Nato troops are also contributing to the peace process by convincing the Taliban to surrender and take part in vocational training in return for $88 a week, reported UPI on January 5. “The military commanders in the north of Afghanistan said that US and Nato war planners have placed reintegration of Taliban foot-soldiers at the top of their strategy for Afghanistan,” the agency said.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 15th, 2011.
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