ISLAMABAD: As Afghan Taliban and US officials are close to signing a peace deal as a result of protracted negotiating process, the Afghan Taliban seem to have indicated their willingness to bring down level of violence carried out by them inside Afghanistan, officials on Pakistani side said.
Officials in Islamabad said that they expect the two parties are close to a final peace deal with regard to the peace in Afghanistan and that in these talks Taliban officials seemed to have indicated their willingness to bring down the level of violence against Afghan government installations and personnel.
A senior US official, Alice Wells visited Islamabad in anticipation of possible success of the talks in the coming days. It is believed that a senior ranking US Administration official will visit Islamabad in order to acknowledge Pakistan’s “positive” role in bringing the two parties to the negotiating table and contributing in the success of the talks.
The senior ranking US official could be Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo himself.
Read: President Trump to visit Pakistan
The outlines of possible deal between US officials and Afghan Taliban is not known as yet—however the possibility of Afghan Taliban halting or bringing down the violence indicate that in return this act of the Taliban the US administration is likely to accept Taliban as a legitimate political player in Afghan society.
This could mean a variety of things—the power sharing arrangement between Afghan government and Afghan Taliban doesn’t seem to be a likely outcome of the peace talks as no prolonged direct talks between the two Afghan parties have been held so far.
The regional players like Russia Federation and Iran, however, are insistent that Afghan Taliban should become part of the Afghan governing arrangement to make the Afghan state a functional entity—a entity that could prove to be effective enough to deal with the rising threat of ISIS in Eastern, Northern and Western Afghanistan.
It is pertinent to mention here that Afghan Taliban are cooperating with Iran and Russia in their operations against Daesh militants inside Afghanistan. Now the regional players want Afghan government and Afghan Taliban to join forces to counter the threat of ISIS that emerged in Afghanistan after the defeat of Daesh in Syria.
However no part of the possible peace deal is yet known to the officialdom in Islamabad. The indications of a peace deal mean that Afghan Taliban and US officials have covered much ground in their talks with each other.
Similarly there is a possibility of reconciliation of positions of Pakistani government and US administration about the future direction of Afghanistan as a result of talks between Pakistani and US officials.
Pakistani military has conveyed to the US administration and Afghanistan that the policy of use of force against Taliban and peace talks could not continue simultaneously.
Similarly Pakistan has also conveyed to the US administration that its ability to bring Taliban to the negotiating table will be severely constraint in case full-scale military operation against Taliban is launched inside Afghanistan.
This argument was, however, diminished in its weight, following a series of Taliban led terror attacks in Afghan capital city of Kabul.
The US, in turn, started advocating, during the last one year, that the regional security forces including Pakistani Army and Afghan national Army should carry out military operations against all groups without any distinction.
“We have been hearing this from Senior US officials since last many months that operations should be launched against all groups without any distinction at regional basis” media reports quoted a senior official as saying.
US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo made this plea to Pakistani Army chief in a telephonic conversation last year.
In others words US administration is put forward twin demands before regional security forces: that Taliban should be brought to the negotiating table and the regional security forces should launch indiscriminate operations against all terror groups.
Despite these differences in perceptions and positions between Pakistani and US positions, all sides have agreed that the proposed talks between Taliban and Afghan government should be held away from media spotlight.
In their consultations in Islamabad and Kabul on this issue, the officials of three countries are hopeful that talks could lead towards resolution of conflict in Afghanistan.
In the past, attempted peace efforts didn’t succeed primarily because both the Afghan government and Taliban didn’t take the possibility of talks as a serious option to resolve the conflict. Both sides continued their respective military efforts to defeat the other side.
Taliban seems to have changed its position of not negotiating with Afghan government. In the past Taliban had refused to sit on the negotiating table with Afghanistan government, “We will talk directly with Washington…….Kabul regime is a puppet regime we will not negotiate with it” said a Taliban spokesman recently.
Most analysts said this statement of Taliban reflected Taliban’s newfound confidence as they are now controlling most of Afghan territory and had also attained a semblance of political legitimacy from the regional players.
In this period the expectation of Afghan government and US officials that Pakistan could bring Taliban to the negotiating table as well as convince the militia leadership to agree to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, has grown. Afghanistan government continued to press Pakistani government to influence the policies of Afghan Taliban.
However more Pakistan was pressurized the more it became caution of its possible role in Afghan peace settlement.
The military official also made it clear that Pakistan army doesn’t possess any ability to make Afghan Taliban come to the negotiating table with Afghan government.
Following this statement Pakistani officials, after their talks with Afghan government representatives in Kabul, made sure that they said nothing about Pakistan’s ability to influence the policies of Afghan Taliban or to bring them to the negotiating table.
Afghan government’s expectations are primarily based on the perceptions that most of the Taliban leadership remained based in Pakistan’s southern city of Quetta, close to Afghan border.
This perception is based on media reports in the American newspapers that Taliban leadership including late Mullah Omar remained based in Quetta for a long period since US invasion of Afghanistan. Apart from these perceptions there is a reality behind these perceptions that Pakistan had supported Afghan Taliban both politically as well as militarily in the past, analysts said.
