Peace talks

Islamabad has been set as the venue for talks between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives in the first week of March. After a third meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group sans the Taliban, the QCG announced their support for direct talks between the missing Taliban and the Afghan government. The QCG has been conducting futile meetings since January but has been unable to bring the Taliban to the talks table. After the announcement was made, the office of the Afghan Taliban in Qatar announced that they were unaware that they would be part of the next round of talks. More specifically, they insisted that the key precondition, the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan, remained in place. The Afghan Taliban have continued to maintain their position despite Pakistan trying to get them to agree to negotiations. On Monday, Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif reached Qatar to help influence the Taliban political office in the country. The declaration that the Taliban would participate in March seemed to stem from such intelligence but clearly the message has not reached the Taliban.

This is the key hurdle to the Afghan peace process. While the Afghan High Peace Council has asked the Taliban to avoid setting preconditions, there has been so little movement in the public posture of the Taliban that it seems the four-country QCG talks are just wasting time. The Taliban are in a tenuous position after the announcement of Mullah Omar’s death, with multiple factions engaged in infighting, but the group has still been able to make key military gains in Afghanistan. The best hope for now seems to be the involvement of some fringe Taliban groups, but that is certainly not worth the hype being created around these meetings. It is true that any hope for long lasting peace in Afghanistan is ultimately based on a negotiated political settlement. The right time for that may indeed be after US troops leave but the Afghan government is too scared to negotiate from a position of weakness. The focus of the talks in March should be on getting the right people on the table. Already, Helmand has almost fallen after Afghan troops withdrew from two key districts over the weekend. Early March will clarify where Afghanistan stands.