HPC: Peace Talks with Taliban ‘Next Week’

Afghanistan High Peace Council (HPC) on Wednesday said that Afghan government official negotiation with the Taliban group will begin next week.

Deputy of HPC said that the Talks will be carried out in China or one of the Arabic countries.

The statement came after that earlier Afghanistan’s most prominent peace envoy held secret talks with former Taliban officials in China, accelerating regional efforts to bring the insurgency to the negotiating table.

People familiar with the movement said the three Taliban who attended the China talks have strong ties to Pakistan’s spy agency, and that they aren’t authorized to speak on behalf on the insurgency about reconciliation.

“The Afghan government will start peace talks with the Taliban in the near future,” Abdul Hakim Mujahid, deputy of HPC said, adding that the government would keep the Afghan people informed of any progress in talks with the Taliban “from the beginning to the end of the process.”

Brokering a peace deal with the insurgents is a priority for Ghani, who took office in September.

The government of Afghanistan is close to beginning direct peace talks with Taliban insurgents.

HPC claims that Islamabad has the ability to persuade Taliban to end the war; a country that had never stood by its commitments against Afghanistan.

In 2013, the Taliban briefly opened a diplomatic office in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Qatar after clandestine talks involving the United States and the European Union.

Angry that Afghans had been excluded, Karzai refused to participate and roundly criticized the effort, which quickly fell apart.
An Afghan official who has been in contact with the Taliban delegation in Qatar but was not authorized to speak to the news media, said one option being considered was to name a former Taliban official to lead the High Peace Council, the Afghan government body that liaises with the insurgency.

The top candidate is Motassim Agha Jan, a finance minister under the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Motassim, the former chairman of the political committee of the Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s Pakistani-based top leadership, for years has called on the group to to engage in the political process.

The peace council, long seen as ineffective, has previously been led by former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani and his son Salahuddin, who were closely allied with slain former militia commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the top leaders of the Afghan jihad against Taliban rule.

Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar’s capital, “said they can’t support [Motassim] publicly, but they also will not stand in the way,” the Afghan official said.

Some Afghan officials warn that the government must proceed with caution.

Afghan political analysts stressed that Islamabad had never been honest in its commitments but this time it should fulfill its promises.

Pakistan’s support is widely seen as critical for a peace process to work. Much of the Taliban leadership has been based in Pakistan since the regime was toppled in 2001, and its fighters have used the lawless border areas between the two countries as an operational base.

Afghan and Western officials have long accused Pakistan of effectively controlling the Taliban insurgency, an allegation Islamabad has repeatedly denied, even as it acknowledges it has some influence over the movement.

Since taking office, Ghani has rolled out a complex strategy aimed at forcing the Taliban leadership to accept that their cause — replacing his government with an Islamist emirate — is hopeless. He has enlisted the support of regional countries believed to protect, fund and arm the Taliban, including Pakistan.

Reported by Fawad Naseri