TWO COLUMNS ON QATAR EMBASSY FOR TALIBAN
America has given its blessing for the Taleban to be brought in from the cold with a critical step towards reconciliation as the world paused to mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The Times has learnt that Washington has endorsed plans for the Islamist network to open political headquarters in the gulf state of Qatar by the end of the year. The move has been devised so that the West can begin formal peace talks with the Taleban.
Hopes of an eventual truce came as President Obama and George Bush attended a memorial ceremony at Ground Zero, where relatives read the names of the 2,977 victims of the al-Qaeda attacks. Mr Obama then flew to the site of the crash of United Airlines 93 in Pennsylvania, and on to the Pentagon to meet victims’ families privately.
As a potent reminder of the potential value of a truce with the Taleban, attacks by the Islamist network in Afghanistan yesterday left two dead and 101 wounded in a truck bomb, marking one of the bloodiest days for American forces since the US invasion ten years ago.
The office of the self-styled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan would be the first internationally recognised representation for the Taleban since its fall from power in 2001.
The White House declined to comment on the development last night as President Obama prepared to address the nation on the anniversary.
There has been a shift in the decade since the attacks in Washington’s attitudes towards the Taleban and a growing official distinction between the Pashtun nationalists and their former allies in al-Qaeda.
Western diplomats said it was hoped that the opening of the Taleban office would help to advance talks intended to reconcile insurgents with the Afghan government and bring an end to the decade-long US-led war.
Qatar is understood to have agreed to the host the office after Washington insisted that it be located outside Pakistan’s sphere of influence. The Afghan government has accused Islamabad of meddling in several previous efforts to negotiate with Taleban intermediaries in an effort to preserve its influence inside Afghanistan.
Western officials said that the opening of the office would serve as a “confidence-building measure” prior to what they hope will become formal talks towards ending the war.
“It will be an address where they have a political office,” said one Western diplomatic source, who declined to be named. “It will not be an embassy or a consulate but a residence where they can be treated like a political party.”
The diplomat stressed that the Taleban would not be permitted use the office for fundraising or in support of their armed struggle in Afghanistan. The Times understands that the Taleban is seeking assurances that its representatives in Doha, the Qatari capital, would be free from the threat of harassment or arrest.
The initiative follows more than a year of informal stop-start talks between Western diplomats, including Britain and the US, and a senior representative of the Taleban, Tayyab Agha, at the home of a former Taleban diplomat in Qatar.
Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the former Taleban ambassador to Islamabad and one-time envoy to the United Nations in New York, said Mr Agha was negotiating with the personal authority of the Taleban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Western diplomats said there was little hope of brokering a end to the conflict without his blessing.
Several previous attempts at negotiations with the Taleban have foundered over the credentials of intermediaries. Britain was badly embarrassed last year when an alleged intermediary thought to be a senior Taleban figure, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, turned out to be an imposter.
Mr Mujahid said the Taleban was seeking to develp its direct contacts with the Americans because it had little faith in President Karzai’s ability to honour promises without American backing.
Senior Afghan officials declined to offer details on the Doha office but one told The Times that there remained considerable internal debate within the the Afghan government on the issue.
“Opponents argue it would give legitimacy to a disliked and terrorist entity, whereas its supporters wish it would deny Pakistan the monopoly on Taleban,” the Afghan official said.
He expressed scepticism that a truce reached directly with the Taleban could end the conflict in Afghanistan, given the interests of its neighbours. Iran is said to be lending support to the Taleban to fight a proxy war against the Americans while Pakistan is determined not to cede influence in Afghanistan to its rival, India, which enjoys close links with the Karzai government.
“There are two parallel worlds, the world of Kabul and Washington and the world of Taleban and their Pakistani patrons,” the official said.
“The latter thinks of its impending victory over fragmented Kabul and an exhausted international community, whereas the former engages in wishful thinking such as finding compromise solutions with the Taleban and convincing Pakistan and Iran to cease their strategic wars with the West by some nice declaration at international conferences.”
Such a conference is due to take place in Istanbul in early November when Western countries will seek a formal undertaking from regional powers to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty. A much larger international conference on the future of Afghanistan will follow in December. Diplomats said the opening of the Taleban office was directly linked to the progress Western powers hope to cement then.
——–
A peace offering for Afghanistan insurgents . . . in Qatar
For a decade they have been the enemy: the fierce tribesmen of the Taleban whose support for al-Qaeda prompted one of America’s longest wars. Now they are to be given, with US backing, their own official residence where they can talk peace.
The move should not come as a surprise. One of the riddles facing the Western allies as they lay the ground for a withdrawal from Afghanistan has been not only how to integrate moderate Talebanis into the postwar order but also how to avoid undue influence from Pakistan across the border. The siting of the office — not an embassy — in Qatar, a key ally in the campaign against Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, suggests that the US has found a way to keep control over future talks.
It was always on the cards that the Taleban would be drawn into the process of withdrawal. Back-channel talks have been under way for well over a year and there should be no suspicion that this represents some kind of surrender, the recognition of a lost war. Nor does it represent a sudden rash of pacifist sentiment.
When British agents persuaded leading Sinn Féin figures to conduct secret talks, it was seen as a basic component of counter-insurgency tactics. The negotiating process is part of a strategy of division that should ultimately neutralise the Taleban, just as it did the IRA. David Petraeus, the new head of the CIA, has promoted reconciliation councils as the road to peace. “This is the way you end insurgencies,” he said.
In part, this is about language. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 has given the US opportunity to edge away from the vocabulary of the War on Terror. Wars are the business of nation states; they have winners and losers and end, ideally, with peace treaties. To make a politically successful exit from Afghanistan the Obama Administration needed to end the war-fighting rhetoric that upgraded the Taleban into an equal warrior class. Now increasingly Administration officials talk about the “struggle against al-Qaeda”, thus opening the way to sit around a table with moderate Taleban leaders.
There are broader questions, though, about the rights and wrongs of Taleban negotiations. Would it be a betrayal, for example, of women and of women’s rights?
If all goes to plan, the Taleban will become more and more public participants in the discussions about the postwar Afghanistan. It will not be easy, and Taleban talkers run the risk of assassination. But there is an unmistakeable push towards bringing the Taleban into play as part of the theatre of withdrawal.
Comments are closed.
