The road to peace in Afghanistan seemed to be a rocky one as the dialogue process hit a snag yesterday with the Afghan president distancing himself from the exercise, just one day after the Taliban opened an office in Doha .
While Qatar has taken centre stage by trying to bring all warring parties to the negotiating table after allowing the Afghan Taliban to open its first office abroad in Doha on Tuesday, the Kabul government yesterday cried foul.
President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the United States and announced his decision to pull out of talks with the Americans as well as the Taliban.
Apparently he was peeved at the sidelining of the Kabul government in the peace process and the Taliban naming its Doha office as the “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.
He also appeared to renew earlier claims that the Taliban and Western officials wanted to destabilise Afghanistan and alleged that Taliban policies were aimed at benefiting foreigners.
However, a member of the Taliban office in Doha, Sohail Shaheen, rubbished the claims and told Gulf Times that the Karzai-led government was “deliberately” throwing a spanner in the works.
“The Taliban office opened in Doha after three long years of talks and deliberations. Everything had been discussed threadbare and it was decided that there won’t be any preconditions,” he said.
A senior Afghan embassy official told Gulf Times that the main bone of contention was the name of the Taliban office in Doha, which was mentioned as the “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” in the statement released to the media on Tuesday and on the plaque of their office in West Bay.
Shaheen, however, said he was not aware of what the Karzai government’s objection to the name of their office in Doha was all about.
“They just want to deliberately create hurdles for us. We are interested in peace and our office (in Doha) is only for these efforts. But it seems that they (the Karzai government) are not interested (in peace efforts). Inshallah, all such elements who are not interested in peace will be exposed ,” he said.
The Afghan embassy official said that they had been assured that the office would not be called anything like the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, since it referred to how the Taliban government in Afghanistan was known before 2001. “We met with Qatari officials and requested them to persuade the Taliban to change the name of their office,” he said.
By yesterday evening, the Qatar News Agency quoted an official source at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying that the official name for the Taliban office that was agreed upon was “The Political Bureau of Taliban in Doha” and clarified that the office was “not the Political Bureau of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.
Meanwhile, talks between senior US officials and the Taliban are expected to take place in Doha “as planned” and as early as today, according to a source.
Taliban official Shaheen told Gulf Times: “This is the initial phase in which there will be no formal talks, but just a general meeting of introductory nature, where each side gets to know the other.”
He said that the head of the Taliban bureau, Tayyab Agha, would head their delegation in talks with the US officials. However, names of the rest of the Taliban team who will participate in the negotiations were yet to be decided.
Hinting that the talks would be a long-drawn process, he said: “After internal discussions, the negotiating team (of the Taliban) will be appointed, which will then make its own agenda and then only the formal talks will begin.”
Sources said that some US officials who will participate in the talks with the Taliban have already arrived in Doha and it was expected that the talks between the two sides could begin as early as today.
But Afghan embassy officials said that for now the Kabul government was sticking to its stand that no one from the country, including any official of the High Peace Council, would be sent to Doha for talks with the Taliban.
Pakistan appreciates Qatar’s role in Afghan peace efforts
While the Pakistani media was abuzz with claims that the country’s role in releasing key Afghan Taliban members played a crucial role in the opening of the Islamist group’s office in Doha, the Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs and the country’s embassy in Doha took no credit in their statements. It also did not comment upon whether any more such releases were expected in Pakistan in the near future.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman had said in a statement that “Pakistan welcomes the announcement of the opening of a Taliban office in Doha for the purpose of bringing peace to Afghanistan and the region”. He also welcomed the start of direct peace talks between the US and the Taliban.
Ambassador Syed Hasan Raza said that Pakistan had all along supported peace efforts in Afghanistan. “The opening of the Taliban bureau in Doha is a welcoming step, which would lead to intra-Afghan dialogue,” he said.
“We hope this reconciliation process reaches a logical conclusion. We also hope this would be an inclusive process and all the relevant stakeholders will be kept engaged.”
He also stressed that Pakistan appreciated the role of HH the Emir and the government of Qatar in playing a pivotal role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table and reconciling the initial irritants that existed in the opening of the bureau office.
“We hope that the Qatar government will play its role in the continuity of this process,” he added.