Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, a top Afghan peace negotiator, said he was cautiously optimistic about prospects for reconciliation with the Afghan Taliban and that all sides now realized a military solution to the war was not possible.
Stanekzai also told reporters that Kabul hoped to transform the Afghan Taliban, who have proved resilient after more than a decade of war against US-led NATO and Afghan troops, into a political movement.
He predicted the highly lethal Haqqani militant network, the most experienced at guerrilla warfare, would join the peace process if the Afghan Taliban started formal talks.
Signs are emerging that the Afghan government is gaining momentum in its drive to persuade the Taliban to lay down its arms before most NATO troops pull out of the country by the end of next year.
Members of the Afghan government, the Taliban and some of the group’s old enemies in the Afghan Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban for years, discussed ways of easing the conflict at a recent meeting in France.
“I think one consensus was that everybody acknowledged that nobody will win by military [means],” Stanekzai said.
Pakistan, long accused of supporting Afghan insurgents such as the Taliban, has sent the strongest signals yet that it will deliver on promises of helping the Kabul government and the US bring stability to its neighbor.
Stanekzai, who studied at Cambridge and was in charge of disarmament in Afghanistan before becoming a senior member of the Afhanistan High Peace Council, stressed that to bring long-term stability, reconciliation efforts should aim to bring the Taliban and other insurgents into Afghan politics.
Some activists fear that Kabul will make concessions to pacify the Taliban that could hurt efforts to improve women’s rights.
Stanekzai said Afghan security forces had made progress, but acknowledged that more work was needed to ensure they would be ready to take over when the US combat mission ends next year.
He also believes a free and fair presidential election in April next year is essential to prevent further conflict. The last vote was plagued by allegations of widespread fraud.
“This is the time where we have to enter in negotiations to make sure that does not happen, but, as you know, politicians are always politicians. They are always in a power game,” he said.
Stanekzai warned that reconciliation was complex, with many moving parts having to be synchronized.
The Haqqanis, who are close to al-Qaeda and have been blamed for a number of attacks on Western and Afghan targets in Kabul, are regarded as a possible spoiler.
However, Stanekzai did not seem too concerned about the group.
“When you go to a market, you always use a brand name and then you sell your very low-quality product under that brand name,” he said. “We enter a negotiation with the Taliban, which is the brand marketable name. The rest is easy.”
Asked if he thought there would be a breakthrough in peace efforts this year, Stanekzai said conditions had been established to make that possible. However, he added that Afghanistan was highly unpredictable.
“Anything can happen. You don’t know which direction these different actors will take,” he said.
Stanekzai knows that first hand.
He recalled how a man posing as a Taliban peace envoy kissed the hand of former Afghan president and High Peace Council chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani before detonating a bomb hidden in his turban.
Rabbani was killed instantly and Stanekzai was badly wounded. He says that faith in Islam has helped him recover.
“It’s life. In Islam, in our religion, it says even if you are in the middle of fire, Allah can save you,” he said.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the