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US to begin meetings with Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — American officials say U.S. representatives will begin formal meetings with the Taliban in a few days at the group’s new office opening in Qatar.
Senior Obama administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, described the Taliban’s move to open a political office Tuesday in Doha as a stepping stone to full Taliban renouncement of al-Qaida.
In Doha, a Qatari official confirmed that the Taliban office was open.
The administration officials say the U.S. and Taliban representatives will hold bilateral meetings, then it is expected that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s High Peace Council will follow up with its own talks a few days later.
Afghan officials to talk with Taliban in Doha
President Karzai says he will send officials to Qatari capital, where Taliban is set to open political office.
Afghan officials to talk with Taliban in Doha
(AlJazeera) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that his government will send representatives to Qatar soon to discuss peace with the Taliban, a day after it was reported that the group was set to open its political office in Doha.
The announcement on Tuesday is the first significant step towards reaching a brokered ceasefire in the 12-year-old war against the armed group.
“Afghanistan’s High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to discuss peace talks with the Taliban,” Karzai said in Kabul, referring to the council he formed in late 2010 to pursue talks with the armed group. Karzai was speaking at a ceremony in which the international military coalition (ISAF) marked its final handover of security to Afghan forces.
Capitalizing on the tribes to end the Afghan war
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan president Hamid Karzai visited Doha, Qatar, last weekend where the emir of the state announced that an embassy in Kabul would be opened. Not much else happened.
The Taliban, some of whom live there in anticipation of future negotiations, are still refusing to hold direct talks with Karzai because they dismiss him as a western stooge.
So what else can be done?
The best way to marginalize the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan is to give the Pashtun tribes more responsibility for security and reduce the power of the central government, according to a trio of experts with long ties to the country.
“That the tribes was the way to go and remains the way to go was never a shadow of doubt in my mind,” said Ken Guest, a former Royal Marine with 32 years of experience in Afghanistan, in an email. “I lived among them well enough to know how enduring their system is.”
A small, professional army and police force supporting indigenous tribal security forces should be established and those tribal fighters should be drawn from communities to which they would be responsible, according to a paper, `The Tribal Path‘ Ken Guest co-wrote with scholar Lucy Morgan Edwards and fellow former Royal Marine Ram Seeger.
Shoring up the tribes and giving them more control would secure the land and pave the way for proper nation-building. “If these could be established and put into effect they would revolutionize the situation in Afghanistan,” the paper reads.
The current strategy for post-2014 — a powerful central government commanding a large army — goes against the grain of the country’s history. Most tribal leaders have historically viewed their rulers in Kabul with suspicion and the Taliban have capitalized on that.
The peace talks are going nowhere partly because the Taliban perceive themselves to be winning, as the 2014 deadline for withdrawing all western troops looms closer. They see talks as a discussion of surrender terms. Those conducting the negotiations are jihadists who have been able to coerce or gain support of the tribes.
“This failure has been further aggravated by the support the west has given to warlords and to a government deemed by many Afghans to be corrupt and illegitimate,” the paper reads.
Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, are playing a duplicitous role in the talks. The spies have their own regional agenda to install a malleable government in Kabul, Morgan Edwards said.
The Qatar Office Conundrum: Karzai’s quest for control over Taleban talks
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