Elusive peace

After the ninth round of talks between the Taliban and US negotiators concluded in Doha this week, it seems the final stages of what has so far been an elusive peace deal may be near. A spokesman for the Taliban has been quoted as saying that only minor matters needed to be sorted out, but that a peace-like situation was difficult if foreign troops remained on the ground. In an interview, US President Donald Trump had said earlier this week that at least half of the 14,000 US forces still on the ground in Afghanistan would be withdrawn. The Taliban was overthrown in 2001 by a US-led military coalition, but continues to occupy huge swathes of Afghan’s territory and has been demanding a complete withdrawal of foreign troops. This delicate process designed to finalise a peace agreement in Afghanistan will be followed by yet another process of complex negotiations aimed at persuading the Afghan government and the Taliban to agree on a ceasefire. So far, the Taliban have refused to sit on the same table as the Ashraf Ghani administration, calling it a puppet regime of the US. With Afghan elections scheduled just a month away in September, all this is something of a race against time. The impact of a settlement, or the lack of it, will also affect the US presidential campaign beginning in November.

If all goes according to plan, the US and other foreign forces will gradually pull out of Afghanistan, while the Taliban will in turn commit that the country will not be used as a launch pad for global attacks either by its own militants or by other groups. Pakistan has played a role in pushing the Taliban towards peace by using its longstanding influence with them.

It is disturbing that even while negotiators sit around table sitting their cups of green tea, deadly attacks by armed groups continue in the ground in various parts of Afghanistan. In the latest, on Saturday, the Taliban launched a major assault on Kunduz. There have been reports that Taliban leaders are finding it difficult to persuade commanders on the ground to accept there will be no further militancy, no attacks on Afghan government officials and that elections in Afghanistan will go ahead as per schedule. Well over a hundred persons have died in terrorist attacks claimed by the Taliban and associated groups this year alone. According to UN figures, the Afghan and US forces however killed more civilians in the first half of 2019 than armed fighters. This decimation of civilians is of course one of the reasons for the anger in Afghanistan over the US occupation. The region badly needs an end to such violence; and Pakistan too would benefit greatly if the interlinked unrest brought by militant groups in both countries could in reality be brought to a negotiated end.