Afghan, Pak leaders make peace bid

Much of Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership flew to Kabul on Saturday for a meeting with Afghanistan’s president to discuss efforts to forge peace with the Taliban. Although leaders from the two countries have met before to discuss a peace deal, the gathering on Saturday was unprecedented because of the number of high-level Pakistani officials in attendance.

The delegation was led by prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. He was accompanied by the chief of the army, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of ISI, Pakistan’s pre-eminent spy agency, as well as the country’s interior and defence ministers and top foreign policy officials. The main accomplishment of the visit, which lasted about five hours, was an agreement to set up a joint commission for promoting reconciliation that is expected to be led by Gilani and President Hamid Karzai.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the meeting, however, was a shift in tone between the leaders of the neighbouring countries that seemed to signal a real effort at a rapprochement between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many analysts consider cooperation between the two countries critical to the success of any peace negotiations with the insurgents, some of whom have had long-standing ties with Pakistani intelligence.

Reconciliation

The talks included members of the Afghan high peace council, a group set up by Karzai to promote reconciliation. The meetings came as the United States and other western governments, aware of ebbing support for the war in their own countries, are increasingly interested in pursuing a political track to ending the nearly decade-long conflict.

Efforts so far to begin peace negotiations with the Taliban have been halting at best. It is not yet clear if Taliban leaders are united in wanting such talks or whether they would even be free to pursue them while sheltering in Pakistan, which in the past wanted to use the Taliban insurgency for its own strategic purposes — among them keeping India from gaining more influence in Afghanistan.

Complicating matters further is that the Taliban’s relationship with Pakistan has become fraught, with the ties between at least some of the Taliban leaders and the Pakistanis no longer so close, according to former Taliban. Many Taliban leaders want to be free to go home to Afghanistan and reconcile but remain unwillingly tethered to Pakistan, the former Taliban say.

And while the US has signaled it might drop certain preconditions for talks, bringing all of Afghanistan’s neighbours and other interested parties together has proved difficult.

Afghanistan’s politicians often point fingers at Pakistan, saying that it knowingly harbors the insurgent leaders who are destabilising Afghanistan, and that Pakistan’s intelligence services have long manipulated the Taliban to Afghanistan’s detriment. However, the meetings on Saturday seemed to open the possibility for an improved relationship.

Afghan officials knowledgeable about Saturday’s discussions say they are not sure why Pakistan chose this moment to make such strong overtures. They suggested dramatically different theories, a sign of how opaque relations are between the various stakeholders in Afghanistan’s future. The Pakistani government, they said, could be eager to bypass the US, with whom its relationship has worsened in the past several months. Alternately, they said that Pakistan may be under pressure from the US to help facilitate a peace deal.

The visit appeared as well to be an effort by Pakistan to quell suggestions from the international community that it might thwart Afghanistan’s efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. In the past, the Pakistanis have not been shy about reminding western countries and Afghanistan that there cannot be a deal without their support, but that did not appear to be their message on Saturday. No US officials attended the meetings on Saturday, and American diplomats did not comment.

It was the public show of support for Afghanistan that was the most encouraging, said Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a member of the Afghan peace council who was the Taliban representative to the United Nations when the group ran the country.

Whether the new commission and the renewed efforts will make a difference is difficult to foresee, cautioned Thomas Ruttig, one of the directors of the Afghan Analysts Network in Kabul.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” Ruttig said, but he added that for any negotiation to be successful over the long term, Pakistan would have to be a strong backer.