LAHORE: The recently held London conference on Afghanistan has fanned deep concerns about the willingness of western powers, including the United States, to broker a deal with the Taliban, making many wonder whether the international coalition is indirectly admitting to its inability to vanquish the al-Qaeda-linked militants. But the bitter truth is that the United States and Britain, through Saudi and Pakistani officials, have been engaged in truce parleys with Afghan Taliban for nearly two years.
Well-informed Pakistani sources say representative of the government of Hamid Karzai and the Afghan Taliban held secret talks in Mecca between September 24 and September 27, 2008. Participating, or rather supervising the Mecca parleys, were also senior American officials. The talks were spread all over four days, but in the end they failed to break the logjam. The Mecca initiative collapsed because the Taliban said they could accept a peace deal subject to the US and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) withdrawing from Afghanistan. The Saudis were then unable to provide a timeframe by which the American troops deployed there would withdraw.
But it wasn’t only the Taliban who had voiced demands during the Mecca talks. The Karzai government and the American officials reportedly insisted that the Afghan Taliban militia should accept Afghanistan’s new constitution and join the political mainstream under the existing system of governance. The Americans also wanted the ameer of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar to ditch al-Qaeda and help arrest Osama bin Laden. All these might have been acceptable but for the Taliban’s insistence that the United States should first withdraw from Afghanistan before a formal dialogue between them and the Karzai government could be initiated.
Diplomatic sources in Islamabad say the Afghan Taliban in the Mecca talks were represented by their former foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, former minister Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, and Afghanistan’s last ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. It is said the trio had traveled to Mecca to perform Umra, but sources they were hosted as official guests of the Saudi government. They were also among those who attended the iftar-cum-dinner party of King Abdullah on September 29, 2008. The Afghanistan government delegation was led by former chief justice Maulvi Abdul Hadi Shinwari and included, among others, Abdul Salam Rocketi, a Taliban commander under Mullah Omar who eventually surrendered to the US.
On their return from Mecca, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, whom Pakistan had arrested in 2001 and later delivered to the US, claimed that he and others had gone on Umra on the Saudi government’s invitation. He further insisted that they neither represented the Taliban nor the Afghan government. “No formal talks were held between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Saudi Arabia”, Zaeef insisted. Then a Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the troika which had visited Saudi was no longer associated with the Afghan Taliban movement.
However, diplomatic circles in Islamabad insist the Taliban troika had visited Saudi Arabia with the consent of Mullah Omar, the supremo of Islamic militants. These sources also say that peace negotiations still continue at the behest of some senior American and British government officials, and facilitating these parleys are the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) of Saudia, the ISI and Pakistan and Saudi officials. Playing a role in the process is the chief of the Islamabad-based Jamiatul Ansar, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, who had earlier tried to broker peace between the Musharraf regime and the fanatic Lal Masjid clerics before the start of the operation silence in the heart of Islamabad in July 2007. Khalil was also brought in when Taliban militants had laid siege to General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi last year.
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 Afghan Taliban to make them come to the negotiating table in Mecca. Prince Faisal is reputed to have close ties with the Afghan Taliban and had acted as an intermediary between them and others before 2001. Before the Mecca talks, a senor Saudi official reportedly traveled to the volatile North Waziristan agency on the Pak-Afghan border to interact with the Taliban top brass, hoping to also meet Al Qaeda no 2, Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri. But the official was allowed access only to the third-tier Taliban leaders, perhaps because of security reasons. Ultimately, though, the Taliban agreed to dispatch some of their representatives for the Mecca talks.
The Mecca talks remained futile due to the inflexibility of the Afghan Taliban who first wanted the withdrawal of the Allied Forces from Afghanistan before initiating a formal dialogue. However, it is ironic that the US is keen to promote reconciliation and political dialogue with the Afghan Taliban while insisting on the military defeat of the Pakistani Taliban. Analysts believe renewed talks of opening a channel of dialogue with the Taliban is an opportunity for Pakistan to defend its interests in Afghanistan besides, circumscribing Indian efforts there. Yet there are those who maintain Pakistan should tread carefully. For one, they argue that the Taliban, whether Afghan or Pakistani, have the same rigid world view and are strategically linked to each other. They argue that the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan would bolster their Pakistani counterparts and other jehadis, sucking Islamabad into a vortex of radicalism and violence from which it would find it difficult to extricate itself.
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