By Abdul Ahad Bahrami

The government of Afghanistan and the High Peace Council are struggling to move forward the process of peace talks with Taliban. While the Taliban have rejected negotiations for peace, the Afghan government is hopeful to finally bring the insurgents back to civil life and end the long-lasting war. For the purpose, it initiated the National Consultative Peace Jirga, which recommended establishing the High Peace Council and granting many other concessions to the Taliban. The Council has assiduously and through different channels has pursued talks with the insurgent groups, but so far the efforts have borne no results. This is at a time that the NATO-led international forces including the US troops are set to begin leaving Afghanistan, starting from mid-2011, and transition of security responsibility to Afghan forces, a process which will be completed by end of 2014.

The peace talks with the Taliban have long been a matter of debates and politics in Afghanistan. It was raised as a formal agenda for the government of Afghanistan in the London Conference, held on January 2010 in London. The conference was mainly focused on gaining international support to woo the insurgents back to civil life. In the conference, the main objectives which were focused on by the participants were talks with the Taliban, starting the delivering of security responsibilities to the afghan forces, and the so-called afghanization of international efforts in this war-torn country for providing peace, and stability and conducting development efforts. The conference had a clear result: the international allies of Afghanistan backed Karzai’s plan for peace talks with insurgents and agreed to allocate budget for financing it. In the conference, President Hamid Karzai announced that the government would hold a consultative council nicknamed as the National Consultative Peace Jirga, intended to bring together tribal elders, officials and local power brokers from around the country, to discuss peace and the end of the insurgency.

The Afghan government organized the event on June 2010, despite the Taliban rejecting any overtures. About 1600 delegates, including 300 women, tribal elders, religious leaders and members of parliament from all over the country attended the council. The jirga was meant to be a consultative forum, aimed at the building of a national consensus on a peace plan, likely to be presented to the Kabul Conference in July, a gathering of the ministers of foreign affairs of over 70 partner countries of Afghanistan, international and regional organizations and financial institutions. The Peace Jirga has been considered as a milestone in the process of peace talks with Taliban. It approved the plan, recommending the government to establish a peace body for pursuing the efforts; grant financial and political concessions to the insurgents groups; release the Taliban-related prisoners and delist names of Taliban leaders from the UN terror Blacklist. Afterwards, hundreds of prisoners who were accused of having links with Taliban have been released; many of top militant leaders excluded from the Blacklist and the talks are sought through different channels.

After months of negotiations, the government of Afghanistan formed the High Peace Council, recommended by the Consultative Peace Jirga, to pursue talks with the insurgent groups. The 70-members High Peace Council pledged that it will seriously and independently pursue talks with the "disgruntled brothers". The council has insisted on being flexible towards the Taliban and pledged the insurgent groups to grant them political and financial concessions. According to the officials, so far there have been many informal talks with the Taliban leaders, who have shown interests for peace talks in order to end the war. Recently, it was reported that with mediation of the Britain, the Afghan government had talks with a man claimed to be a top Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor. According to the reports, the imposter Taliban official had received hundreds of millions of dollars. The news came as a absolute debacle for the Afghan government.

Despite the Government's optimisms, the Taliban have publicly rejected the initiative led by the High Peace Council, mocking the concessions it has announced. Despite hopes of a new era of peace negotiations with the Taliban insurgents, seemingly the efforts still face serious obstacles. Based on continued war, military and political developments in Afghanistan, the process of peace talks with the insurgent groups appears to have remained in standstill. The Peace initiative, which is considered as a surprise policy roundabout towards the Taliban after years of military operations, has triggered mistrusts, skepticisms and objections among Afghans, the civil and women organizations and some regional countries. President Hamid Karzai who has announced the reintegration plan one of his main goal in his last five years term, insists on courting the insurgents back to the society, but the human rights and women organizations, political factions and ethnic groups in the country besides some regional and international powers has shown mistrusts towards this move. They are worried about likely compromises on the democratic values in the country, the hard-won achievements which are gained during past nine years.

Despite the strident echoes in the political scene, there still exists much vague about the nature and the way of implementation of the negotiations with insurgents. Still, there are widespread concerns over the consequences of the talks with insurgent groups particularly secret dealings for the country and the revered constitution. Despite assurances by the government, many questions remain unanswered. Will the top leaders of the Taliban, the criminals who afghan people can never forgive, be exempted from criminal charges such as homicide, genocide, ethnic cleansing and etc and given political concessions? And is this initiative a form of return of the Taliban to political arena of the country? If so, there is no doubt that current structure of Afghan state and our democratic values such as humans and minorities’ rights, dignities of women and freedom will be most vulnerable in the future. Undoubtedly, if such controversial plans are not sought and supported by all political groups and national consensus of the Afghans, the result will be widespread mistrust and an absolute failure. In this case, the initiative can be strayed to secret dealings behind closed doors and the consequences of such irresponsible moves will be harmful for the political cohesion and national unity in the future of the country. If the well-known hard-line top leaders of the Taliban with their ideological thoughts rebound to political scene of Afghanistan, then not only the constitutional values and the hard-won human, women and minority rights would face serious challenges, but also the very existence of the constitution will be at risk.

After collapse of the Taliban regime, the progress of women rights and their situation is appeared to be one of the most significant achievements of past nine years. The women, who were deprived of their basic rights and virtually were considered as the second gender in the country, have now partially restored their dignity and social position under the aegis of the much-praised new constitution of Afghanistan. During Taliban rule, the women as the half of the population were disappeared from the society, being banned of going to schools and offices. But as the US-led coalition attacked Afghanistan, overthrowing Taliban regime, the people of Afghanistan particularly women started a new era, enjoying their rights approved by the new constitution. In case of returning the Taliban and sharing power with them, the hard-gained achievements for the women as well as the principles such as democracy and humans rights which Afghanistan is experiencing for the first time in its history, will lead to a gloomy future.

Granting concessions such as government posts and money to the Taliban’s extremist leaders, by strong possibility will never bear the expected results and can be potentially dangerous; because the top militants' leaders of Taliban have their own inflexible conditions and at any circumstances they will be pursuing their vicious ambitions. They are not prepared to accept the constitution; renounce violence and participate in a free and open society enshrined in the afghan constitution. They have repeatedly announced that they are determined to oust the multi-national NATO-led troops out of country. Thus, it is hard to believe the Taliban to return to the afghan society and even if they return, they will come back with their ideology and it will be disastrous to Afghan constitution, democratic values and the achievements of past nine years.

One of the optional goals set for the negotiations with Taliban is to split the group, by separating smaller groups and buying the mid-level commanders and low-class fighters. If the reintegration initiative mainly targets the small groups which fight under the umbrella of the diffuse network of Taliban, then by strong possibility it may bear positive results. There are many small insurgent groups that are fighting in the ranks of Taliban. These groups are not essentially ideological extremists as the mainstream and the leaders of Taliban are. Some of the fighters for the “war machine of Taliban” are made up by dissidents who protest against widespread poverty, corruption and incapability of the government and the local officials. Besides all these factors the unemployment has given the Taliban the space to recruit fighters by paying a pittance to the jobless youths. Considering the huge mass fighting in the ranks of the Taliban and the reasons they join the insurgents, the reintegration can buy such small groups and individual fighters and separate them from the mainstream of Taliban extremists. The purpose of weakening the insurgents can be accessible if the reintegration plan mainly focuses on the mass fighters of Taliban and the government gains public support of the Afghans for the initiative. When the sub-groups are parted from the main body of the Taliban, defeating the main core of the group’s leadership and the hard-line body of the insurgents by military power would be much easier.