Peace in Afghanistan

Ceasefire and intra-Afghan dialogue remain elusive and reconciliation efforts have not yet yielded results

The Taliban have once again rejected an offer by President Ashraf Ghani for a Ramazan ceasefire. The offer came at the conclusion of a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, convened earlier this week in Kabul with over 3,000 Afghans that unanimously called for a peace dialogue with the Taliban to end the 18-year-long war.

Despite President Ghani’s announcement of releasing 179 prisoners, the Taliban, who have held several rounds of talks with the US in Doha, have reiterated their demand for finalising withdrawal of foreign troops before engaging in talks with the government in Kabul– calling any intra-Afghan dialogue an internal issue.

While the US and the Taliban seem to have made considerable progress on the issue of a potential withdrawal and guarantees against the use of Afghanistan as a base for terrorism, a ceasefire and an intra-Afghan dialogue have remained elusive and reconciliation efforts have not yielded results.

These remain key sticking points in negotiations. With prominent politicians boycotting the Loya Jirga, including Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, the growing divisions within Kabul on the path for reconciliation are now stark.

President Ghani insists that any dialogue without his government’s participation threatens prospects for talks. These challenges of navigating Kabul politics ahead of a presidential election scheduled for September will need to be surmounted for sustainable peace in Afghanistan.

The Taliban too must be convinced to engage in an intra-Afghan dialogue at the earliest as the window for finalising a peace deal shrinks. In the absence of a negotiated settlement by summer, a hotly contested presidential election amidst continuing operations by the Taliban may prolong the war.

A hasty withdrawal of US troops without a political outcome of an intra-Afghan dialogue has the potential of sparking another deadly round of civil strife – an outcome Kabul, Washington and Islamabad would prefer to avoid at any cost. 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2019.

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