FOR more than a century people have been flocking to the
Pakistani hill station of Murree for relief from the sweltering summer
temperatures of the plains below. It was a fitting venue for talks held last
week between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which deemed it “the first
meeting of formal peace negotiations”. The United Nations Security Council
applauded it as a milestone and Pakistan is claiming the credit.
Lately Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s president, has been
taking heat at home for having treated Pakistan too warmly. He had calculated
correctly that having Pakistan’s all-powerful army on side it would use its
influence with the Taliban to broker peace talks—and perhaps even a ceasefire.
Most Afghans, however, are in no mood to be neighbourly. Pakistan is widely
loathed for aiding and abetting the Taliban, who are currently engaged in an
especially bloody fighting season. (Afghanistan’s latest national hero is a
policeman who boasts of having killed no fewer than six “slaves of Pakistan” on
June 22nd, during an assault the Taliban had launched against the parliament in
Kabul.)
Mr Ghani has been trying to moderate Afghanistan’s
traditional habit of blaming Pakistan for every terrorist outrage. To that end
he has made a series of once-unthinkable concessions, and it has cost him
dearly. When he struck an intelligence-sharing deal with Pakistan’s reviled
military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), it
sparked particular outrage within Afghanistan’s security establishment.
Hope springs for a negotiated peace
With little to show for his tilting, Mr Ghani has hardened
his tone in recent weeks. In May he wrote a stiff letter to the Pakistanis
demanding the arrest of Taliban leaders living in their territory. On June 2nd
both countries hauled each other’s ambassadors onto their respective carpets.
That sort of scene was more familiar during the time of Mr Ghani’s
Pakistan-bashing predecessor, Hamid Karzai. Mr Karzai meantime has been busily
setting himself up as the true defender of Afghan national sovereignty. Many in
Kabul suspect he is positioning himself for another run at the presidency.
So the talks in Murree came in the nick of time for Mr
Ghani. Little is known about the content of the discussion, but what few
details have emerged suggest it was significant. The exchange of “views on ways
and means to bring peace and reconciliation” began with a sunset iftar at which
both sides broke the day’s Ramadan fast. It did not end until the sehri meal,
just before the next day’s sunrise. Pakistani officials insist the Taliban
present were “mandated” by their leadership, in contrast to meetings held in
the Chinese city of Urumqi in May; a spokesman for the Taliban had dismissed
those as being unauthorised. There had also been a meeting in Qatar in May, but
the Taliban had insisted that remain a “track-two” affair, with no government
representatives involved. They always refused face-to-face meetings with the
government on the grounds that it was a puppet regime; they said they would
only talk to its American paymasters. The discussions in Murree included
Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister, Hekmat Karzai, a nephew of former
president.
Chinese and American diplomats were also involved in the
Murree meeting, highlighting the powerful international consensus over the need
for a political deal to end the long war in Afghanistan. China has feared it
could expand and influence the Muslim population in its western region of
Xinjiang. Over the weekend the Chinese state press echoed the UN’s celebration
of these talks, awarding them the distinction of being the first direct contact
between the two sides.
Help Pakistan help Afghanistan
The Taliban are increasingly torn. Their field commanders,
encouraged by the prospect of the American forces’ complete withdrawal by the
end of 2016, are not as open to negotiating as some of the movement’s leaders
living in Pakistan. Disheartened fighters are defecting to a local offshoot of
Islamic State (IS), which is picking up support in eastern Afghanistan. IS has
even won the backing of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord infamous from the jihad
of the 1980s and 90s who has been harrying the government in Kabul for the past
14 years, often in league with the Taliban.
Pakistani and Afghan officials say there will be further
meetings after Ramadan has ended. Their talks could drive further defections
from the Taliban. Even if they make real progress, further splintering would in
effect open a new front. And the balance of opinion within the highest ranks of
the Taliban remains mysterious. A Western
official in Kabul noted that the delegates in Murree were all firmly linked to
Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI. That implies that the Taliban’s negotiators are
not a representative group; many of their comrades are deeply resentful of
Pakistan’s pushy generals. Murree may be cool, but Afghanistan’s civil war is
sure to stay hot through the summer.
