Taliban Talking Secretly to Kabul Government

The Taliban have held secret talks with representatives of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to try to jumpstart a peace process that stumbled and stalled at the starting gate, according to Afghan officials and a senior Taliban representative.

The discussions with members of the Afghan High Peace Council have so far been unofficial and preliminary, seen as an attempt to agree on conditions for formal talks. But they do suggest an interest on both sides in proceeding, or at least toying, with a peace process that has been mired in controversy since the official opening of a Taliban political office in June in the Gulf nation of Qatar.

Habibullah Fauzi, a former Taliban diplomat who is now a member of Karzai’s High Peace Council, told The Associated Press that “some individuals (on the peace council) have met Taliban on an individual basis,” though he would not say who or when. He also said he’d heard reports of meetings in Saudi Arabia between High Peace Council members and Taliban who were in that country to perform the Islamic pilgrimages of Umrah and Hajj.

“The Afghan government certainly is in contact with certain leaders and certain figures among the Taliban,” Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Musazai said Sunday at a news conference in Kabul.

The Taliban marked the opening of their political office in Qatar by flying their white flag, emblazoned with a Quranic verse, and a sign that identified the group as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. That enraged Karzai, who accused the religious militia of trying to establish a government in exile. Peace talks involving the United States that were to follow the official opening ended before they could begin, threatening the possibility of a negotiated end to 12 years of war.

Last week U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sought Pakistan’s help to press the Taliban into opening negotiations with Karzai’s representatives. The Taliban’s leadership is believed to be living in Pakistan.

“The hope is that they will start talks soon with the High Peace Council,” Sartaj Aziz, adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister on national security and foreign affairs, told the AP on Sunday. “It is at a very fragile place right now.”

One of the Taliban’s representatives in Doha, Qatar told the AP that secret talks with the High Peace Council have already begun.

The representative, who was a senior official in the Taliban government during its five-year rule that ended with the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, said that Taliban negotiator Mullah Abbas Stanikzai met last month with a senior member of the High Peace Council in Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates. He said the two tried to reconcile differences and pave the way for an official meeting.

The Taliban representative talked with the AP in Islamabad in a rare face-to-face interview. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had ordered his spokesmen to refrain from public statements.

This article appeared in print on page 3 of the August 6th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.