Business Recorder Editorial Dec 7, 2018

Another round of Afghanistan peace efforts

US Special Envoy for Afghan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad has held talks with Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and delegation-level talks with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua on December 4, 2018 during his third visit to Pakistan since taking charge of his office in September this year. Khalilzad had accompanied US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Islamabad just a day after his appointment and then returned in October. This visit is part of an extensive itinerary that will take the Special Envoy after Pakistan to Afghanistan, Russia, Uzbekistan, the UAE and Qatar in a stepped up effort to find a peaceful solution to the war in Afghanistan. In Islamabad the Special Envoy received assurances of support from our foreign minister for a political settlement in Afghanistan. Although this statement and our Foreign Office’s take on Khalilzad’s visit on the surface appeared positive, reports said the talks were inconclusive. This should not come as a surprise since the issue of finding a solution to the Afghan conundrum, complicated as it already is, was rendered even more difficult by US President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of Pakistan’s role in the affair. The interview in which Trump castigated Pakistan was followed by a brief twitter war between him and Prime Minister Imran Khan. On the eve of Khalilzad’s visit though, the US President wrote our prime minister a letter seeking Pakistan’s cooperation and acknowledging that both the US and Pakistan had suffered because of the conflict. This was seen as an attempt to smooth out the wrinkles in the relationship produced by the Trump-Khan exchange and pave the way for Zalmay Khalilzad to be received more warmly. Before departing on his extended tour, Khalilzad said in an interview that he had reassured Pakistan’s leaders that the US was not seeking a political settlement hostile to them. This could be interpreted as an attempt to allay Pakistan’s oft repeated concerns regarding India’s growing role in Afghanistan.

Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s shuttle through the region and further abroad to speak to regional and international stakeholders in the Afghan conundrum, including a meeting with the Afghan Taliban’s Doha office, comes amidst a growing consensus worldwide that no military solution is possible and only a political settlement can cause the guns to fall silent. Iran, despite being at loggerheads with the Trump administration on its nuclear programme, agrees with this formulation in tandem with Pakistan. While the US-Pakistan relationship is bedevilled by Washington’s blow hot, blow cold perambulations, the war inside Afghanistan is intensifying, with the Taliban gaining ground and inflicting an enhanced attrition rate of casualties on the Afghan government forces that the US military by now considers unsustainable. The Taliban have simultaneously been following a classic strategy of talking to the US fitfully while fighting, at the same time sticking to their position of no talks with the Kabul government that they regard as a US puppet. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s half-in, half-out stance vis-à-vis the current peace efforts reflects concerns that his government may be bypassed. He may have been encouraged by the just concluded UN conference in Geneva that recommended direct talks between the Ashraf Ghani government and the Taliban. Meanwhile the foreign media reports say Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada has called a Doha office delegation to Pakistan for consultations simultaneously while Khalilzad was here. Whether this signals a response to the latter’s expressed desire that the Taliban mandate their representatives to take decisions after talks with him or not is unclear. Logically, the endgame in Afghanistan points in the direction of a political settlement that offers the Taliban a share in power without being in a position to overthrow the Kabul government. But to get there, all the parties directly engaged in the conflict, the US, the Kabul government and the Taliban will sooner or later have to open channels of dialogue with each other to grope their way towards reconciliation.