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finally talking to the enemy By Amir Mir
A spokesman of the Taliban,
Zabihullah Mujahid, promptly rejected the report
and asserted that Mullah Omar was in Afghanistan -
not Pakistan. The report was subsequently refuted
by a senior Afghan intelligence official who
maintained that the Taliban leader had not been
killed but that he might have been taken into
custody by the ISI following Bin Laden's killing
because he was no longer able to contact his
people in Afghanistan.
Yet, on May 27, the
New York Times and the Washington Post reported
that some higher-ranking American officials had
met with a senior aide to Mullah Omar at least
three times in recent months in the first direct
exploratory peace talks.
These meetings
were facilitated by Qatar and Germany, but the
US Central Intelligence
Agency and the US State Department had been
present each time, meeting with Tayyab Agha, who
is a personal assistant to Mullah Omar and
considered quite close to him.
At the same
time, there were reports that Abul Haq Haqi, the
former Taliban spokesman, had played a key role in
the US-Taliban communication to pave the way for a
negotiated end to the conflict in Afghanistan.
Haqi was arrested by US and Afghan intelligence
agents from a secret location in Afghanistan in
January 2007 and is now acting as a mediator
between Mullah Omar and Washington.
According to the proposed peace formula,
the US offered the Taliban control over the south
of Afghanistan, while leaving the north for other
political forces under American influence. But the
formula was rejected by the Taliban, saying it
could lead to the disintegration of Afghanistan.
The Taliban have always rejected peace
talks with the United States as long as foreign
forces remain in Afghanistan. However, privately,
they have reportedly insisted through
intermediaries on direct meetings with senior US
officials.
In a major development, the
Quetta shura led by Mullah Omar has decided
to distance itself from al-Qaeda, at a time when
an international reconciliation process gathers
pace for a negotiated settlement. Well-informed
diplomatic sources in Islamabad say there is a
possibility of the Taliban parting ways with
al-Qaeda, especially when there is a growing
realization among the Taliban that their links to
the international terrorist network threaten their
long-term survival and their efforts to moderate
the image of the Taliban.
The long-time
alliance between al-Qaeda and the Taliban was
rooted in Bin Laden's personal friendship with
Mullah Omar, who now deems it fit, after the
al-Qaeda leader's demise, to break with al-Qaeda
and negotiate a settlement with Western powers.
The May 8 statement issued by the Quetta
shura on Bin Laden's death shows the
Taliban now want to distance themselves from
al-Qaeda. Although it described Bin Laden's
killing as a great tragedy, it neither condemned
the death nor announced retribution, as had been
its routine in the past when commenting on such
deaths in official statements.
The
statement seemed to have been drafted carefully by
the Quetta shura elders to convey a subtle
message from Mullah Omar to international
powerbrokers that he was ready to distance the
Afghan Taliban from al-Qaeda, which is a prime
demand of the United States for entering into a
peace dialogue with the Taliban.
In the
statement, issued on the Quetta shura's
website, Voice of Jihad, the Taliban described Bin
Laden as the "Great Martyr Sheikh Osama bin
Laden", and dismissed claims by US officials that
his death would impact the war in Afghanistan. The
declaration said:
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
extends its deep condolence to the family of the
martyr, to his followers and to fighter
mujahideen on this great tragedy. We pray to the
Almighty Allah to accept the sacrifice of the
martyr. May, the Almighty Allah, salvage Islamic
ummah [community] from the current
situation of crisis due to the impact of the
blessing of the sacred jihad and martyrdom of
the martyr.
The statement described
Bin Laden as the leader of the global jihad,
saying he led the legitimate cause against the
Israeli state and the jihad against the Christian
and Jewish aggressions in the Islamic world. The
statement added:
The martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin
Laden will give a new impetus to the current
jihad against the invaders in this critical
phase of jihad. The tides of jihad will gain
strength and width. The forthcoming time will
prove this both for the friends and the foes, if
God is willing.
The statement followed
days of speculation that Mullah Omar actually
wanted to distance his group from al-Qaeda,
especially when Bin Laden was no more. In fact,
the Quetta shura statement was released
five days after his death and it seems strange
that the Taliban did not announce any retribution,
unlike the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani
Taliban) which threatened to avenge the killing.
Analysts believe ties between al-Qaeda and
the Afghan Taliban were weakened to a great extent
after allied forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001,
primarily because the goals of the two
organizations were not closely aligned. While
al-Qaeda is focused on worldwide jihad against the
West and the establishment of a religious super
state in the Muslim world, the Afghan Taliban are
focused on Afghanistan and have shown zero
interest in attacking targets outside their
country.
Having fought an endless war for
almost a decade now, both the Western allies and
the Taliban seem to have realized that it should
come to an end, as early as possible.
However, the Pakistani military and
intelligence establishment have serious
reservations about a "selective approach" by the
US in peace talks with the Taliban and want the
inclusion of other insurgent groups, apart from
the one led by Mullah Omar.
Other groups
like the Haqqani network, allegedly based in North
Waziristan, the Salafi faction of the Taliban that
controls Kunar and Nuristan provinces in
Afghanistan and the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar have so far not been included in the
peace talks.
"We want all these groups to
be part of any engagement in Afghanistan ... all
of them have genuine stakes there. Without any of
them, no arrangement can succeed," a senior
Pakistani official was quoted by the English
daily, The Express Tribune, as saying on June 20,
requesting anonymity.
The Pakistani
official said that the issue was at the center of
discussions at talks during Karzai's recent trip
to Islamabad when the two countries launched a
bilateral commission to seek peace in Afghanistan.
The commission, which is headed by the countries'
chief executives and includes military and spy
chiefs, is the first serious effort that indicates
a parallel arrangement to carry forward
negotiations with the Taliban without American
involvement.
"That is what we will like to
move forward with ... Americans are keeping us at
a distance from any development. This is our
answer to them: we can do it better without you,"
the official said.
He claimed that the
Afghan president had also expressed reservations
about the West's way of handling the Afghan
problem and assured that Pakistani authorities
would focus more on peace negotiations through
this bilateral mechanism. Interestingly, at his
June 18 press conference in Kabul, Karzai clearly
indicated that instead of waiting for the US to
militarily weaken the Taliban, he would like
Pakistan to help end the dispute. "Getting
Pakistan's help in peace talks is very important
for us," he said.
The resurgence of the
Taliban has made things difficult for the allied
forces in Afghanistan, especially when there is
war weariness back home. American people are
asking for an end to the US wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq because of the strain they are creating
on the exchequer. Afghan leaders, too, have been
making headway to deal with a post-withdrawal
Afghanistan.
Without talking to the
Taliban, the American withdrawal is likely to be
risky. The Afghan government simply doesn't have
the capacity or ability to hold a fragile country
together without the extremely costly and
unpopular American war effort.
Therefore,
the cold, hard logic of economics and democratic
toll of public opinion seems to have prevailed on
the US administration in its decision to pursue a
negotiated settlement of the Afghan conflict
rather than carrying on an endless war that
seemingly cannot be won.
Amir
Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the
author of several books on the subject of militant
Islam and terrorism, the latest being The
Bhutto Murder Trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
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