Poreg View: From various accounts it is clear that some progress has been achieved in the unstructured American ‘dialogue’ with the ‘good’ Taliban to the relief of Pakistan, which is the prime mover of the initiative. The Washington Times despatch lends credence to this view. It quotes Ghulam Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan’s education minister, as saying that a large number of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters "have lost all hope" and are seeking peace deals since Osama bin Laden was killed at Abbottabad ‘s safe home.
Wardak is a member of the Peace Jirga (council) in charge of reconciliation efforts with the Taliban. Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president of Afghanistan, heads the council. There has been an ‘increase in the number of approaches’ to the jirga from militants, according to him. But he is short on specifics and it puts a question mark on his claims since the Islamist militia have launched a deadly spring offensive to regain control of the country. Nevertheless, it is a welcome development and it coincides with what Wardak terms as stepped up US contacts with the Taliban in recent weeks. Whether Mullah Mohammed Omar himself was approached or not is unclear though. Wardak is not alone to speak about the ‘dialogue’ with Taliban. German weekly, Der Spiegel reported last month (May 2011) that Germany had helped U.S. officials to contact Mullah Omar’s personal secretary, Tayyab Aga.
The diplomatic surge, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently, was aimed at bringing about a political solution in Afghanistan and to honour the Obama timetable for withdrawal of American forces from the war ravaged country. And, also to ‘shatters the alliance between the Taliban and al Qaeda’.
This approach, frankly speaking, has no universal approval. There are discordant notes within the Washington establishment and amongst Kabul’s political parties. A vocal critic is Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, and a part of the Northern Alliance that had helped the U.S. forces to pull down the Taliban regime in 2001. He is not against the peace process per se but against the way the peace effort has been mounted. His objection centres round the fact that the Taliban has shown no sign of dropping its goal of re-establishing an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan. He has a point. Creation of Islamic emirate in Afghanistan is the raison d’etre for Taliban. The moment Taliban gives up on the idea, they lose their USP. The Afghan government has set three conditions for reconciliation: The militants must lay down their arms, renounce al Qaeda and respect the Afghan Constitution. The success of the reconciliation effort depends very much on Islamabad, which has a vested interest to keep Afghanistan on the boil till it achieves its objective of strategic depth beyond the Durand Line.
Therefore, Kabul’s distrust of Islamabad is understandable and it comes through clearly in the Education Minister’s interview with WT. He has accused Pakistan of providing safe havens for terrorists, citing the discovery of bin Laden in a house very close to Pakistan’s main military academy. “If Osama bin Laden was there (in Abbottabad, Pakistan), second and third and fourth layers of terrorists could be there as well. He (Osama) could not be standing alone”. He has a point. In Washington for a tête-à-tête with Obama officials on education projects in Afghanistan, Wardak has used the occasion to send the message that Osama’s death has not ended the need for US deployment in his country. How effective his advocacy is not known but he was forthright with his interlocutors. “The terrorist mentality can produce a number of Osamas. There may already be a number of Osamas”, he cautioned. This is a view shared by some neighbours of Afghanistan and they are also against creation of a sudden security vacuum.
– M Rama Rao
