Stabilising Afghanistan: Taliban lampoon London summit’s peace goal

Western nations not taking practical steps to fulfill prerequisites for talks: spokesman.

ISLAMABAD:

The Afghan Taliban dismissed on Wednesday the outcome of a recent tripartite summit in London which aimed to work out a peace deal among warring factions in Afghanistan within six months.

“These extraordinary meetings are always considered positive and productive but they are constantly unyielding,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, while also rejecting direct talks with the Afghan High Peace Council.

At the tripartite summit, President Asif Zardari, his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai and British Premier David Cameron urged the ultraorthodox Taliban militia to join the reconciliation process.

The summit and other “horse trading” were “the real obstacles of effective and fruitful negotiations between the factual sides”, wrote Mujahid in English in an apparent reference to a longstanding demand that that any negotiations should be between the Taliban and the United States.

The London conference also revived the idea of the Taliban opening a political office in Doha for peace negotiations.

Mujahid accused Western nations of facing a military defeat and using such conferences as propaganda to conceal the deadlock in the country and to “show that some activity and progress is going on”.

Mujahid told AFP by telephone that the views in the lengthy website “article” would be followed soon by an official Taliban response to the conference.

US-led Nato combat forces are due to leave Afghanistan next year, and efforts to negotiate peace have gained urgency as they seek to leave with some dignity. The Taliban have consistently refused to negotiate directly with the Western-backed Kabul government, which they have been battling since they were ousted from power in a 2001 US-led invasion.



With neither the Taliban nor the United States at the talks, and the militants refusing to talk to Kabul, analysts said the commitment by the three leaders at London summit risked being one-sided.

Mujahid indicated this was indeed the view of the Taliban. “They are taking propaganda gained from the peace slogan and are not trying to take any practical step to fulfill the prerequisites for negotiations,” he added.

Analysts

Analyst Waheed Muzhda, who served in the 1996-2001 Taliban regime, said the Taliban spokesman did not appear to reject the possibility of progress in peace talks.

“It is believed that the Taliban are under some pressure from those who are believed to be their main backers, to reach some kind of accord with the Kabul government soon,” Muzhda said. “But the announcement in London that some sort of peace will be achieved within the next six months has put the Taliban in an uneasy situation.”



Some analysts, however, indicate that the London agreement is solely between the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, who are not the main actors in the Afghan conflict.

“The deal would have been doable if it was between the governments and the Taliban,” Borhan Osman, an Afghan writer told The Express Tribune.

Osman, who works for the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), an independent non-profit policy research organisation, said the Taliban have always refused to talk to the Afghan government.

“So, there is no guarantee that a peace deal would be achieved during the given time frame as there is no indication of change in the Taliban’s attitude towards the talks,” he added.

(WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM AFP)

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2013.