Taleban may soften stance for peace talk
Published: Jan 27, 2012 22:55 Updated: Jan 28, 2012 23:36
KABUL/PARIS: Senior Afghan peace negotiators believe the Taleban are willing to significantly soften past hard-line ideologies, with its leaders already laying the ground for possible peace talks in Qatar.
Former Taleban minister Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a member of the High Peace Council set up by President Hamid Karzai two years ago to liaise with insurgents, said that after a decade of fighting with NATO, the Taleban were ready to moderate on reimposition of fundamentalist positions.
And despite the assassination only last September of former president and leader of the peace process Burhanuddin Rabbani, secret discussions that began in Germany in November 2010 between US, Taleban, German and Qatari representatives had a good chance of success, Rahmani said.
“The Taleban are not back to govern the same way as the old Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. When they are back, they will be back as Afghans,” Rahmani, a Taleban defector but with strong ties to the movement, said at his sparsely furnished home in a part of western Kabul heavily damaged during the country’s bloody civil war.
“For Taleban members with the talent and skills, they will be election candidates for Parliament, the presidency or the Cabinet. The Taleban are not back to take over Afghanistan,” he said.
Martine van Bijlert, of respected independent think-tank Afghanistan Analysts Network in Kabul, said no one could assume that talks with the Taleban would not work. “But at the same time, we can’t get ahead of ourselves,” she said. “There seems to be a real chance at the moment. The high council has an interest in optimism of course, given their role in the process. But whether it can work is a fine balance. There is not an option not to try.”
Meanwhile, Karzai met Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday hoping to convince Paris not to accelerate its troop withdrawal and clinch a partnership agreement for post-2014.
The French president last week suspended all French training and support operations on the ground and sent his defense minister and armed forces chief to Kabul after four of their soldiers were killed by a rogue Afghan soldier. Paris has 3,600 troops in Afghanistan as part of the 130,000-strong NATO-led force there. French troops mainly patrol Kapisa, a mountainous province near Kabul.
