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Ghani adviser claims Taliban are not invested in peace
Waheed Omer, President Ashraf Ghani’s advisor and director general of the Office of Public and Strategic Affairs said on Saturday the Taliban must first fulfil its obligations made in the past before laying down new demands.
Speaking at a press conference Omer said that in the past two years the Afghan government has taken six major steps towards peace, but this has not been reciprocated by the Taliban.
“The Taliban has not taken even a small step towards peace over the last two years,” Omer said.
“Instead of imposing new conditions, they [Taliban] must fulfill their past commitments,” Omer added.
Omer also emphasized that peace based on a deal between several politicians or “elite peace” will not be sustainable.
Taliban members have said they are willing to enter into talks with a new administration if Ghani steps down, but the president has rejected the idea of an interim government, which he said Friday just leads to bloodshed – as experienced in the past.
“We have to agree on the election date that there is a legitimate way to transfer power, we had transitional governments, which led to bloodshed,” Ghani said.
However, experts say that any pursuit of supremacy by the Taliban and the government will completely thwart the peace efforts.
“The Presidential Palace must be convinced that fortunately or unfortunately an interim government is coming. In my view, an interim government has many advantages over a merged government which includes the Taliban,” said former water and energy minister Ali Ahmad Osmani.
“In Afghanistan, there is a need for a national reconciliation between the two sides of the war, until the two sides stop fighting and seeking supremacy, there will be no peace in Afghanistan,” said Tariq Farhad, a former presidential adviser.
Meanwhile, State Ministry of Peace Affairs says the Taliban is not willing to sit down at the negotiating table.
“The other side is not yet ready to sit at the negotiating table, so the consequences of civilian casualties as a result of the ongoing war and violence are on those who are delaying the peace process,” said Najia Anwari, the ministry’s spokeswoman.
Meanwhile the president’s adviser Omer also said that the Taliban negotiators are not showing any interest in holding meetings with the Afghan Republic’s peace talks team in Doha after negotiations resumed early this month following a three week break.
“Our war with the Taliban is over values. We are ready to be convinced or to convince them. Our hope is that the Taliban will participate in Doha and focus more on talks,” Omer said.
However, the peace talks in Doha have stalled and face an uncertain fate. Each side accuses the other of obstructing the process and making excuses.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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