Will bomb attack on Afghan vice president subvert Taliban peace talks?
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Afghanistan's first Vice President Amrullah Saleh survived a roadside bomb explosion that targeted his convoy in Kabul on Wednesday. Questions are rising now whether peace talks with the Taliban — already delayed several times — will begin, as planned, in the coming days.
As fate would have it, something happens in Afghanistan whenever some progress is made in moving forward the peace process. Over the past week, Afghan officials have been making announcements almost every day that their negotiation team is ready to depart for Doha to participate in intra-Afghan talks, but the 20-member delegation still hasn't left Kabul yet.
It has been more than six months that the landmark Taliban-US peace agreement was signed in Doha, Qatar. The Feb. 29 deal mentioned rather unrealistically that 6,000 prisoners — 5,000 Taliban and 1,000 Afghan government servicemen — would be exchanged within 10 days, by March 10, and the intra-Afghan negotiations would begin on the same day. While most of the hurdles related to the release of Taliban inmates have now been overcome, there is still no date for the commencement of the long-awaited talks.
The attack on Saleh — former chief of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan intelligence agency — could strengthen the stance of those opposed to peace talks with the Taliban. Though a Taliban spokesman immediately after the incident denied the group's involvement in it, his words won’t convince those who blame the Taliban for most of the terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and doubt their commitment to peace.
Saleh, an ethnic Tajik with strong anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistan views, recently warned Afghan politicians that they would be condemned during their lifetimes and in the afterlife if they overlooked the issue of the Durand Line border and unrealistically gifted it to Pakistan. Reminding them that Peshawar was once the winter capital of Afghanistan, he tried to revive the almost dormant issue just when intra-Afghan talks were about to begin.
Rahimullah Yusufzai
Saleh, an ethnic Tajik with strong anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistan views, recently warned Afghan politicians that they would be condemned during their lifetimes and in the afterlife if they overlooked the issue of the Durand Line border and unrealistically gifted it to Pakistan. Reminding them that Peshawar was once the winter capital of Afghanistan, he tried to revive the almost dormant issue just when intra-Afghan talks were about to begin — largely with Pakistan’s role as a facilitator. No Afghan government since Pakistan’s independence in 1947 has recognized the British-demarcated Durand Line as an international border. Saleh and other hardliners have taken an even tougher line on the issue and in a recent tweet he said that Afghanistan should make Pakistan pay if it wanted the Durand Line to be recognized. It is unclear what the price would be. The case itself is weak and Afghanistan has yet to offer talks to its neighbor to discuss the issue or raise it at any international forum such as the United Nations or International Court of Justice.
Saleh's views regularly generate controversy. Ashraf Ghani's decision to pick him as a running candidate was a surprise in the September 2019 presidential election. Saleh was apparently chosen to seek the Tajik vote which was mostly going to Ghani's old electoral rival, Abdullah Abdullah.
The upcoming intra-Afghan negotiations could have been cancelled or delayed further if Saleh hadn’t survived the bomb explosion in which several of his guards were killed and injured. Last year, he escaped a terrorist attack on his office where he was speaking to his supporters. At least 20 persons were killed in the incident and subsequently Saleh’s stance on issues concerning the Afghan peace process and the country’s future hardened.
Now that intra-Afghan dialogue is in sight, it is likely to go ahead as almost all stakeholders, particularly the US, are keen that the talks are held to peacefully bring an end to the Afghan conflict that began 42 years ago as a result of the communist revolution. There is a consensus that a political settlement is the only way to restore peace after the military option has been tried without success by the US-led NATO, Afghan forces and the Taliban over the past two decades.
The issue of prisoner exchange has been nearly resolved as the Taliban freed 1,005 Afghan government servicemen instead of the 1,000 the group was required to release under the Doha deal terms. The Afghan government has released 4,994 Taliban prisoners. The six remaining inmates are those whose release was opposed by France and Australia by pleading that they had killed their soldiers deployed as part of the NATO forces in Afghanistan in mostly “green-on-blue” insider attacks. The Afghan government is consulting both countries to resolve the issue. Saleh revealed in an interview before Wednesday's attack that the six Taliban prisoners would be transferred to Qatar for a specific period of time and not allowed to travel to other countries. Once this happens, the last remaining hurdle in commencing intra-Afghan talks would be removed.
- Rahimullah Yusufzai is a senior political and security analyst in Pakistan. He was the first to interview Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and twice interviewed Osama Bin Laden in 1998. Twitter: @rahimyusufzai1
