LAHORE: The American initiative to hold talks with the Afghan Taliban through Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies has failed to produce the desired results so far primarily due to the trust deficit between the two sides and the obstinacy of the former rulers of Afghanistan who are still determined to fight out the US-led Allies, before re-establishing their gone empire — the Islamic Emirate of Taliban.

Amidst fresh media reports that the US has undertaken a re-think of its Afghan policy, diplomatic circles in Islamabad say Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, pushed by the decision makers in Washington and London, had been brokering talks between the Taliban and the Karzai government for almost two years now, but without any results, chiefly because the Taliban had never been easy to talk to. These circles added that the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) is busy holding secret talks with the Talibanwith the help of the Saudi leadership and the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) of Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani leadership and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

The Pakistani Foreign Office sources in Islamabad say the back-channel talks were motivated by the fact that eight years after the US invasion of Afghanistan, the deteriorating security situation in the country had prompted a review of the US strategists who have failed to deliver victory to the resourceful Nato forces against the ragtag Taliban militia. There is a military standoff despite the fact that the lightly-armed Taliban guerrilla fighters in terms of firepower should have been no match for the world’s only superpower and the Western armies. Subsequently, having declared the Afghan war un-winnable, even the Nato military commanders now want to engage the Taliban not on the battlefield but at the negotiating table.

Therefore, there is talk of negotiations with the Taliban and even offering them a share in the Afghan administration as part of a political settlement. Under these circumstances, the head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, has already stated that the US should be prepared to talk to its enemies, followed by the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke’s November 24 statement that Saudi Arabia had initiated a dialogue with the Taliban and that the United States would support any Saudi initiative.

This is a sea change in the views of the Western nations that followed US to sending troops to Afghanistan to fight the supposedly common enemy, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Until now, they seemed determined to defeat al-Qaeda and Taliban and extend the writ of President Karzai’s government to all corners of Afghanistan. But lately, it appears that the emphasis is shifting and the game plan is to bring the Taliban on board and wean them away from Al-Qaeda. The outcasts of yesterday, after being demonised to no end, are being lobbied hard and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are being used by the West to rope them in. Therefore, the US has already, for the first time, declared officially that the Afghan problem needs to be resolved politically, through reconciliation.

According to the Pakistani establishment circles, the secret talks involve officials from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Britain, some key leaders of the Afghan Taliban, the chief of the Islamabad-based Jamiatul Ansar Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil. The sources say the representatives of the Karzai government and the Afghan Taliban had already held secret talks in Makkah from September 24 to 27, 2008. Yet the parleys remained futile even after four-day-long marathon sessions as the Saudis failed to give a time frame on behalf of the US for the withdrawal of the Western forces from Afghanistan. The Taliban representatives had maintained during the Makkah talks that the exit of the Nato and ISAF forces was a pre-requisite to strike a peace deal with the Karzai regime, in line with Osama’s stance that the US troops should leave Saudi Arabia as well as other Muslim countries. At least 18 Afghans met with Saudi leader King Abdullah and other Saudi officials over the course of four days in September 2008.

The Pakistani establishment sources say it was actually Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the former head of the Saudi intelligence agency, who had requested Pakistan to use its influence on the Taliban and to make them agree to table talks at Makkah. Prince Faisal is said to have a close relationship with the Taliban and often acted as an intermediary between the Saudi government, Pakistan, and the Islamic insurgents in the 1980s. A senor Saudi official reportedly traveled to North Waziristan on the Pak-Afghan border before the Makkah talks to interact with the Taliban top brass. He wanted to see Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri but he was not allowed a meeting and instead asked to see the third-tier leaders. However, the Taliban eventually agreed to dispatch some of their representatives to Saudi Arabia.

During the talks, the representatives of the US and the Karzai regime had their own preconditions, the most important being that the Taliban militia should accept Afghanistan’s new constitution and join the political mainstream under the existing system of governance. The Americans also wanted Mullah Omar to ditch Al-Qaeda and help arrest Osama bin Laden. The talks eventually failed due to the obstinacy of the Taliban representatives who first wanted the withdrawal of the US-led allied forces from Afghanistan.

The News, November 26, 2009

Comments

comments