Afghan peace talks: a sure uncertainty

By Dr. Mohammad Taqi

Defections to Islamic State remain a concern but unless IS has or gets a state patron, it will fizzle out or be militarily neutralised by Afghans and the rump international forces.

“Until I know this sure uncertainty I’ll entertain the offered fallacy” - Shakespeare.Peace prospects in landlocked Afghanistan appear to have entered unchartered waters after the recent Afghan government-Taliban powwow in Pakistan’s Murree hills. Both the Afghan president, Dr Ashraf Ghani, and the Taliban seem to have opted to entertain the fallacy offered as talks — courtesy Pakistan — till such time that they surely know more about its uncertainty or veracity. The two sides have used Eid holiday messages as an opportunity to indicate that they are bracing for the second round of talks, which might take place as early as the following weekend. The Taliban went first and issued an Eid message in the name of their one-eyed leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, who has been hidden from the public eye for a good 14 years now. Dr Ghani duly welcomed the proclamation, even calling Mullah Omar “akhund”, an Afghan honorific for holy man.

The statement attributed to Mullah Omar was posted to the Afghan Taliban’s website a day before Eid and, according to the same portal, was circulated to the rank and file Taliban at the time of Eid prayer sermons. The 2,700-word statement makes interesting reading. The nuanced and measured document, which is well referenced to the scriptures, indicates right away that Mullah Omar — a man who was never known for abstract thinking and intellect — did not write or even commission anyone to write it. After the customary Eid greetings the statement gets straight to business and gives a 10-point synopsis of the Taliban position on issues from jihad to the rights of minorities and modern education in Afghanistan. While maintaining that their “holy war” is still “legitimate” the treatise notes, “concurrently with armed jihad, political endeavours and peaceful pathways for achieving these sacred goals is a legitimate Islamic principle”. The statement clearly says, “We have established a ‘political office’ for political affairs, entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring and conducting all political activities.” It also puts some distance between the Taliban and Pakistan/Iran by stating, “Some circles accuse the mujahideen of being agents of Pakistan and Iran. This is an utterly unjust verdict.”

Overall, the Taliban statement issued in Mullah Omar’s name endorses the current peace parleys but raises a flag as to which Taliban group should be considered a bona fide interlocutor by the Afghan government. For all intents and purposes the Taliban Eid statement seems to have originated from their Qatar political commission, which has been leery of Pakistan’s motives and even the Murree talks that did not have their representation. This Taliban chatter suggests that the Quetta Shura did not authorise or send emissaries to the Murree process and they consider it an affront that Pakistan left their key political leaders out with a sleight of hand. An article that was posted on the Taliban website right after the Murree talks and then taken down without an explanation had dissed the Murree talks as Pakistan bringing in a few Taliban “in their personal capacity” to circumvent the Taliban leadership, especially the Qatar office.

This interplay between elements of the Pakistani security establishment and their Taliban protégés suggests that there will be some hiccups before the much-trumpeted second round of talks gets underway. In a hurry to relieve pressure from international powers and, more importantly, from Dr Ashraf Ghani who has been getting increasingly impatient with it, Pakistan might have oversold the Murree talks and the second or third tier Taliban it had induced to show up. Through the statement released in Mullah Omar’s name, the Taliban’s Qatar political office seems to have tried to keep its foot in the talks door and present a unified front but their displeasure at being left in the lurch may be yet another sign of trying to buck Pakistan’s sway over them. Pakistan might now be tapping its Gulf allies to facilitate and probably host that next round. If the upcoming talks indeed do materialise, the composition of the Taliban delegation there may serve as a good indicator of the jihadist group’s cohesiveness and the relationship status of its various factions with Pakistan.

The talks do have the potential to open up rifts not only among the various power centres of the Taliban movement but also with their affiliates such as the Haqqani terrorist network and Pakistan. The complete radio silence from Mullah Omar for years has already created divisions and desperation within his jihadist outfit. Unless Mullah Omar miraculously comes of out of his occultation — my money is on that he is no more — the Taliban hordes may just be heading towards internecine warfare just the way the erstwhile mujahideen of the 1980s and 1990s did. And while that will be a messy and bloody proposition for jihadists it might not be a bad one from the Afghan government’s perspective. Defections to Islamic State (IS), which is trying to establish itself as the alternative jihadist-terrorist franchise in Afghanistan and Pakistan, remain a concern but unless IS has or gets a state patron, it will fizzle out or be militarily neutralised by Afghans and the rump international forces. While IS will find Afghanistan’s culture and history inhospitable to developing roots there, the proposal by Dr Ashraf Ghani to establish a regional hub in his country that could be used by the US and other allies to combat IS is timely and prudent.

While the IS spectre looms over Afghanistan, talks with the Taliban have opened up a window of opportunity to not only negotiate peace but also pry away the reconcilable jihadists from their longstanding patron(s). The Qatar political office’s haughtiness nothwithstanding, it is, however, unlikely that without Pakistan’s patronage the Taliban can survive on the battlefield and that window of opportunity can snap shut as quickly as it has opened up. Pakistan retains tremendous leverage — if not outright control — over the most lethal Taliban affiliate, i.e. the Haqqani network and various other field commanders. Controlling the jihadist kitty, weapons flow and limiting access to the Taliban leadership are other levers that Pakistan has used with success over the years. Pakistan’s security calculus vis-à-vis India has not changed one bit with the corollary that its interest and most likely the tactics in Afghanistan have not changed either. It is hard to see Pakistan reversing over 40 years of its Afghan policy just because the Taliban’s Qatar office might want out now. The prospects of a deadly rest of the summer in Afghanistan are much more tangible than that of the elusive peace offered in Murree. Dr Ashraf Ghani’s negotiating team led by his brilliant young deputy foreign minister, Mr Hekmat Khalil Karzai, has its work cut out for it if they want to turn an uncertainty into a surety.