MPs criticizes HPC for not having any achievement

A number of Parliament members have criticized the High Peace Council (HPC); citing the council does not have any achievement despite spending millions of dollars.

From the very beginning of its establishment, the HPC has spent a large amount of money, but it still has failed to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table and thus all these monies are wasted.

“The High Peace Council failed to persuade the armed oppositions of the government to bring them into the negotiation table, despite of spending millions of dollars,” said Shinkay Karokhail, representative of Kabul in Parliament.

The representative of Kandahar, Muhammad Naeem Lalay Ahmad Zai also said, “The Taliban group has never ready for peace talks and no practical programs have been implemented the High peace council to persuade the group for reconciliation.”

However, the deputy of High Peace Council says that they have initial contacts with a number of Taliban group members and a part of Mullah Rasoul becomes ready for peace talks.

“Currently, the Taliban group has devided to eight groups. We have contacted with a number of Taliban commanders in districts and the party of Mullah Rasoul showed readiness for peace talks,” said Ataullah Salim, deputy of HPC.

Meanwhile, a number of parliament members have emphasized that the United States and China have not enough pressed Pakistan to have a result.

“US and China were the observers of the quartet meeting of peace talks. Unfortunately, they have not press Pakistan as it needed that it would have a result,” said Shekiba Hashemi, representative of Kandahar in parliament.

Lack of a specific mechanism and policy for peace: since its establishment on 5 September 2010, the Afghan HPC does not have a specific and comprehensive policy to bring the government’s armed oppositions to the negotiation table.

In this regard its major policy was the “peace and reintegration program” which the Taliban considered “complete surrender” to the Afghan government and not the program for peace. Thus, lacking a realistic policy was a main factor of HPC’s failure.

The former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai always emphasized on the Afghan HPC as the only address for negotiation with the armed oppositions, but when Ashraf Ghani came to power, he relied on Pakistan and China and mostly carried out the peace talks through representatives of the Presidential Office and the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thus the Afghan HPC was marginalized from the Afghan Peace Process.