Afghan Peace Efforts Reopen Wounds Over Pakistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — On the surface, much of the Afghan public has lined up behind President Ashraf Ghani in his bid to bring the Taliban to peace talks.

After a year of Taliban gains in multiple battles, even an outside chance of opening a diplomatic channel strikes many officials as a crucial effort. And indications from Afghan officials that an initial meeting could happen within a week or two from now have heartened Mr. Ghani’s supporters.

But even as early skeptics of the president’s effort are publicly coming around, there is a deep current of distrust and concern among many Afghans over how he has tried to bring his plan to life: by intensively courting Pakistan’s military, which nurtured the Afghan insurgency in its early years, to pressure Taliban leaders to join talks.

In recent weeks, Mr. Ghani has made concessions to the Pakistanis that would have seemed unimaginable under the last administration, including tailoring anti-militant raids to Pakistani requests.

It has been an unsettling spectacle for Afghans who firmly seePakistan as an enemy. Some are asking how the president could ignore so much recent history that has shown Pakistani relations to be, as one former Afghan official put it, “accident prone.”

One critic is the former national security adviser, Rangin Dadfar Spanta. Even though he welcomes the idea of talking with the Taliban, he said he thinks Mr. Ghani is giving away too much to Pakistan. Handing over a top Pakistani Taliban commander and going after the Pakistani Taliban on Afghan soil without reciprocal efforts from Pakistan “is absolute appeasement.”

“My advice is to be careful,” Mr. Spanta said in an interview.

On Feb. 15, Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, a prominent mujahedeen commander, also warned of the perils of getting closer to Pakistan.

And there are those, too, who still question the wisdom of trying to politically engage the Taliban at all. Among them is Amrullah Saleh, a former Afghan spy chief, who noted recently on Twitter that “sharing the state with the Taliban” would not bring peace. “It institutionalizes conflict,” he added.

Despite the warnings, Mr. Ghani has been risking tremendous political capital to do what eluded his predecessor, former President Hamid Karzai, who is skeptical but supportive of his successor’s efforts, according to people close to him. Mr. Karzai spent years trying to persuade the Taliban to negotiate with his government. By some official accounts, there were as many as five instances when the Afghan government felt they were approaching a breakthrough.

“On a number of occasions we were very close,” Mr. Spanta said. “It’s not the first time that Pakistan has made promises and not delivered.”

In June 2011, according to one current and one former Afghan official, the government had paved the way for Pakistan to draw the Taliban into talks. A delegation led by Mr. Karzai met with Pakistan’s top civilian and military leadership, including Yousaf Raza Gilani, then the prime minister, and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff, who promised to urge the insurgent leadership to join talks.  -  Read More at NYT

Afghan Peace Efforts Reopen Wounds Over Pakistan