KABUL: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani late on Saturday named 48 people who will decide the negotiation strategy for a meeting with the Taliban aimed at ending the country’s protracted conflict.
The members of the High Council for National Reconciliation include former President Hamid Karzai, ex-mujahideen leaders Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Mohammad Karim Khalili, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Yunus Qanooni, Salahuddin Rabbani, and members of other factions.
“The council will draw the red line, strategy and agenda for the negotiators who will engage in direct talks with the Taliban that are set to be held in Doha,” Zarqa Yaftali, one of the eight women on the team, told Arab News. She added that she was unaware if the council “would have the authority to take the final decision on peace” with the armed group.
While the council is seen as a government-appointed body, Karzai has said he “will not be part of any government structure” but that he would continue his endeavors for peace.
At least one general from the ex-communist regime is on the list, as are those who fought with the Taliban for nearly three decades.
Ghani is keen to broaden the team that will advise the squad of negotiators ahead of the crucial meeting, the date for which has yet to be finalized.
He has asked religious scholars, parliament, the media and provincial councils to put forward their picks for the council within a week, an indication that the talks are not likely to start in early September.
The setting up of the council has been beset by delays since the signing of an historic peace agreement between the Taliban and Washington in Doha in February this year.
Intra-Afghan talks should have begun in early March following a prisoner exchange deal between the Taliban and Kabul in line with the February agreement, which also paves the way for a complete withdrawal of all foreign US-led troops from Afghanistan by next spring.
According to Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who is leading the 48-member team, the talks are scheduled to take place in the coming week.
But the Taliban said the group had made “no such pledge” and that the talks would take place only after Kabul freed “all of its remaining comrades from prison” — a key condition of the February accord.
After being sidelined from the US-Taliban talks, Ghani’s government initially refused to release Taliban prisoners but began freeing them under pressure from Washington.
However Ghani has yet to free 320 Taliban inmates because of objections from France and Australia, which say that some of those prisoners killed their nationals in Afghanistan.
A majority of the council members are men and include factional figures who have been involved in Afghanistan’s more than 40 years of war, particularly since the Taliban’s ouster in late 2001.
“The newly established council is an aquarium of known politicians, with Ghani keeping the water and food supply in his control to keep the fish happy,” Torek Farhadi, who served as an adviser in Karzai’s government, told Arab News. “This National Reconciliation Council was set up to keep Ghani’s potential rivals under his thumb. They are all men.”
But Yaftali appeared unperturbed by the list of council members, saying her focus was on “pushing for just peace where women’s rights and all Afghans are protected.”
Two weeks ago a female negotiator and prominent women’s rights activist, Fawzia Koofi, was wounded in an attack to the north of Kabul by people she described as “peace spoilers.”
And while Yaftali said she was put forward by activists to be on the list and had been informed before the appointment, another member said that being selected for the council had come as a surprise for her.
“I was not consulted at all,” Mari Akrami, head of the Afghan’s Women Network, told Arab News. “I feel worried because there is no security guarantee. It is a huge responsibility both to accept the membership and to not do it.”
Akrami was among the group of women who last year met the Taliban in Doha, where the armed group has had a political office since 2013.
“They were different from the warrior Taliban from any aspect, but am not sure they were different ideologically,” she said.
Experts have questioned the names in Ghani’s latest decree.
“Many on the list are civil-era warlords, and those responsible for the destruction of Kabul and elsewhere or the same corrupt political circle since the Taliban’s fall,” analyst Shafiq Hapal told Arab News. “Those who have lost dear ones in the war, or the victims’ sides, are not on the list, that is a great pity, but let’s hope that these men who have fought each other can agree on something that will lead to peace.
