Taliban go-betweens draw up road map
By Gareth Porter
KABUL - If peace talks do ultimately begin between Afghan President Hamid
Karzai and the Taliban leadership, they may well follow a "road map" to a
political settlement drawn up by a group of ex-Taliban officials who have been
serving as intermediaries between the two sides.
The four Taliban mediators have been encouraging both Karzai and their
leadership to begin with steps toward military de-escalation and
confidence-building before proceeding to the central political-military issues
that must be negotiated, a member of the mediation team, Arsullah Rahmani, told
Inter Press Service (IPS) in an interview at his home in Kabul.
The first step toward a settlement is "an agreement between
Karzai and the Taliban about no killing of doctors and no damage to roads, etc
[by the Taliban], in return for no night raids and detention [by the United
States]", said Rahmani, a former Taliban commander who is now an elected member
of Afghanistan's upper house.
Rahmani said the mediation group's plan called for the two sides to address the
question of changing the constitution in the last stage of the negotiations,
after they had reached agreement on the key international issues of withdrawal
of all foreign troops and al-Qaeda and the Taliban's renunciation of ties with
al-Qaeda.
The mediators, all four of whom occupied prominent positions in the Taliban
regime until it was overthrown by the US military intervention in 2001, have
passed their proposal for peace negotiations to Karzai, Taliban leader Mullah
Omar and the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
according to Rahmani.
Karzai personally asked the ex-Taliban officials to help get peace negotiations
started, according to Rahmani. He also appeared to reflect the team's
de-escalation proposal when he told al-Jazeera in January that he would seek an
end to night raids on Afghan homes as well as to the arrest and detention of
Afghans on suspicion of belonging to the Taliban.
The team also believes the Taliban are at least favorably inclined toward their
"road map" to a settlement. Former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed
Muttawakil, another member of the team, told IPS that the Taliban "are going to
accept some of our suggestions"
The mediation team has the advantage of being led by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef,
who is said to have been one of the founders of the Taliban movement.
Zaeef helped organize Islamic courts during the Taliban regime, worked in the
Taliban Defense Ministry and was the regime's last ambassador to Pakistan. He
was subjected to degrading treatment at the Kandahar detention facility before
spending two-and-a-half years in the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
Suhail Shaheen, who was spokesman for the Taliban embassy in Pakistan when
Zaeef was ambassador there, and is now a journalist, has written that Taliban
leader Mullah Omar and his inner circle "have chosen Zaeef as their point of
contact for talks with the Americans and NATO".
It is unclear how Zaeef and other team members communicate with Taliban
leaders. Muttawakil said in an interview that it would be dangerous to the
Taliban to try to contact them directly. "I don't want anyone to be harmed," he
said. He has communicated with the Taliban primarily through his own statements
to news media, Muttawakil told IPS.
The mediation team was allowed to visit Saudi Arabia in October 2008, at a
meeting reportedly attended by some Taliban officials. A Taliban official
denied Taliban officials had attended.
However, Zaeef has also been allowed to travel to Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates on a number of occasions, and may have been able to speak directly to
senior Taliban there.
The mediators and other close observers of the Taliban position do not expect
the al-Qaeda issue to be difficult to resolve. Rahmani said the Taliban
statement of December 4 offering to negotiate "legal guarantees" against
"meddling" beyond Afghanistan's borders was a signal that its leadership is
prepared to renounce ties with al-Qaeda under a peace agreement.
The immediate concern of the mediating team is that the US will block political
moves toward a settlement.
"I don't understand US policy," Rahmani said. "Sometimes they say 'we will
negotiate with the Taliban,' and sometimes they say 'we must destroy them'."
The US has refused in the past to provide assurances that Taliban officials
would be given safe passage to negotiations in Kabul. The mediation team now
suggests that negotiations should take place outside Afghanistan.
"The Taliban should have the ability to go to other countries, should have an
office outside the country, in Turkey, for example," said Rahmani. "If we have
offices of both sides in another country, they could reach agreement."
The existing constitution of Afghanistan is expected to be the real sticking
point in the negotiations. The former Taliban officials have different
interpretations of the Taliban's position on that issue.
Rahmani told IPS he believes the Taliban will "accept the constitution with
some changes. They're going to demand changes in a few articles, not the whole
thing," he said. The ex-Taliban commander said that assessment is based on
discussions with the Taliban, adding, "It's not my opinion. This is what they
said."
Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, believes that the changes the
Taliban are likely to demand would be very far-reaching.
In an interview with IPS, Muttawakil said he expected the Taliban to reject
some provisions "copied from the US constitution", such as the position of vice
president, and demand "an emirate government".
Muttawakil suggested that the primary implication of such a proposal would not
be to eliminate electoral institutions but to ensure that laws based on Islam
are enforced. "The important thing is sharia law," said Muttawakil.
Sharia-based laws exist on paper, he said, but are not being enforced.
"Narcotics and corruption are forbidden by Islam," said Muttawakil, but are
being allowed under the present system.
Former Taliban Foreign Ministry official Wahid Muzhdah, who is not a member of
the mediating team but analyzes the Taliban's thinking, says the Taliban
insistence on "sharia law government" means they want religious scholars, or ulema,
to exercise ultimate power over the law and perhaps even the selection of a
government.
The Taliban position is that not everyone should have the right to elect the
president, according to Muzhdah. Although the idea of giving the ulema veto
power over the choice of government would represent a direct challenge to the
liberal democratic institutions in the existing constitution, Muzhdah recalls
that it was widely discussed during the period immediately following the
overthrow of the communist-led regime in 1992.
The political negotiations between Karzai and the Taliban may also hinge on the
idea of an interim government that would preside over a process of revising or
rewriting the constitution, according to Muzhdah.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an ally of the Taliban who commands an insurgent group
independent of the Taliban leadership, has called for such a temporary
government to ensure that a new constitution is written with participation of
"all parties".
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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