By L.F. Brown
3 October 2004
THE Afghan Government is in secret talks with senior Taliban figures to let them back into office only 2½ years after the US-led military campaign to remove them from power.Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, and his predecessor Mullah Ghous are among several top Taliban officials staying in government "safe houses" in Kabul during the negotiations.
Envoys of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's Western-backed President, have promised the former ministers posts in the Government after [the October 9 direct Presidential] elections in return for persuading some of their colleagues to lay down their arms and support his candidacy.
Afghans in peace talks with Taliban, The Sunday Times, 31 May 2004
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he has been in touch with a senior Taliban official ahead of crucial polls in Afghanistan and will meet him "soon", reported Pakistani newspapers on Wednesday.Karzai told Pakistani newspaper editors here at the end of his two-day visit on Tuesday that he was in contact with former Taliban foreign minister Wakeel Ahmed Mutawakil, reported the Dawn daily.
Karzai and Mutawakil, considered a moderate in the hardline regime, discussed ideas on how to strengthen peace in Afghanistan, said Dawn.
"I will have a meeting with him soon," Dawn quoted the Afghan president as telling the Pakistani journalists. He gave no date.
Karzai in touch with Taliban for peace in Afghanistan, Agence France-Press, 25 August 2004
"There's no such thing as good Taliban and bad Taliban."
Dr. Abdullah, Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, 2003
When reports first came out that a former top Taliban official, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, had been released from custody in the first week of October 2003 from the Bagram air base north of Kabul, it seemed to take Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai by surprise (BBC, 8 October 2003):
Mr Mutawakil's uncle had claimed the former foreign minister was now free in the southern city of Kandahar, apparently confirming an earlier Afghan foreign ministry report [that said he had been released after helping arrange talks between US forces and the Taliban in Kandahar].However, Mr Karzai told reporters at the presidential palace: "This is not true, this is absolutely not true, he has not been released."
The US special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, standing next to Mr Karzai, added: "We have not released him yet."
It would take about another two weeks before Mr. Karzai confirmed the news on the 21st, but not before a spokesman of his, Jawid Ludin, got into a little spot of confusion himself (BBC, 21 October 2003):
On Tuesday [the 21st] a spokesman for President Karzai, Jawid Ludin, seemed unsure himself as to Mr Mutawakil's whereabouts. "I have no accurate information," he told the BBC Persian service. On Monday Mr Ludin appeared to confirm earlier reports saying that Mr Mutawakil had been released from detention at the US airbase at Bagram, near Kabul. But he has now told the BBC that: "So far as we understand he is still under arrest and not yet released." "I don't know if he is in Kandahar or Bagram," Mr Ludin said.
Although (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 21 October 2003):
Also today [the 21st], former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil said he and other former Taliban officials are willing to give their support to the government of Hamid Karzai.Jawed Ludin, a spokesman for Karzai, said Mutawakil sent a letter to Karzai from his home in Kandahar making the offer.
His release (now said to have been on the 15th) and offer were confirmed on the 25th by Khalid Pashtun, spokesman for Kandahar Governor Mohammed Yusuf Pashtun (CNN, 25 October 2003):
"We have invited other Taliban also who have been released from custody to come together and join hands, and participate in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the country," Pashtun told The Associated Press.The spokesman said Muttawakil would be able to participate in nationwide elections set for next year, the first since the Taliban were forced from power by a U.S.-led coalition in late 2001.
President Hamid Karzai's spokesman Jawid Luddin said Thursday that the government was considering whether to accept an offer of aid from Muttawakil but would do so only if it was determined that Muttawakil wasn't directly involved in terrorist acts or crimes against the Afghan people.
Muttawakil is believed to have been a moderate member of the hard-line Taliban movement and had previously been held by the U.S. military at its main base in Bagram, north of the capital, Kabul.
Adding to the confusion were reports in the media that there had been a meeting between Mr. Mutawakil and US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during the latter's visit to Afghanistan (this before Mr. Mutawakil was reported to have been released), although these were denied.
It all began when...
Talk of reaching out to the “moderate” Taliban began in October 2001. The idea was to divide the Taliban movement and then co-opt those who weren’t considered to be hardline, ostensibly those not allied with the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. This campaign was led by the Taliban’s immediate patron in the region, Pakistan, as well as the leader of the coalition to oust the Taliban, the United States (San Francisco Chronicle, 17 October 2001):
The United States and Pakistan agreed yesterday to work urgently for the creation of a new, broad-based government in Afghanistan that both sides said could include moderate elements of the Taliban movement, whose present leadership is now a target for the U.S.-led military campaign.
India was not pleased, while the reaction from the Northern Alliance was mixed, with their political leader and former Afghan President, Burhanuddin Rabbani endorsing the call, while their foreign minister, Dr. Abdullah, denounced the plan and the very existence of moderate Taliban (San Francisco Chronicle, 17 October 2001):
"There is no such thing as moderate Taliban elements. Their object is terror and fanaticism. So who would expect us to join such a government with such people? This is against the objective of the international alliance against terrorism."
The Moderate
If the criteria for endorsement were based on no longer being associated with Mr. Omar, then it can’t be seen as too much of a surprise that Mr. Mutawakil was enlisted (although apparently he wanted to be given shelter in Qatar). He defected from the main Taliban group reportedly because of a disagreement with Mr. Omar over the harbouring of Osama bin Laden just before the US invaded, before surrendering to US forces a few months later in Kandahar. But then again, he chose to have a disagreement with Mr. Omar as military action against his regime was already on its way and not before or even a little after President Clinton issued Executive Order 13129 of July 4, 1999:
I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies of the Taliban in Afghanistan, in allowing territory under its control in Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven and base of operations for Usama bin Ladin and the Al-Qaida organization who have committed and threaten to continue to commit acts of violence against the United States and its nationals, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.
That he used to be a spokesman and personal secretary to Mr. Omar as well as the second-highest ranking official in the Taliban's Supreme Council raises serious questions about how "moderate" he really can be.
When the documentary “Beneath the Veil” was first screened in June 2001, “the more respectable face” of the Taliban proved to be more of the same:
MOTAWAKIL (through translator): The football stadium is a place of leisure, a place for playing games, a place for joy. When justice is done on behalf of a victim, that too is a joyful event, which brings order and security to society.SHAH (on camera): But the international community paid for the football stadium. They wanted the Afghan people to play football there. Instead, you are executing people there.
MOTAWAKIL (through translator): I will make the international community an offer. In Afghanistan, everything has been destroyed. If they help us to build a separate place suitable for carrying out executions, we have no problem with that. When they criticize us 10 times, they should at least help us once. They should build a place for executions and get financial support so that football could be played at the stadium and our work can be done as well.
And while it has been reported that he opposed the destruction of the Buddhist statues in 2001, he publicly defended the plans.
It has been said that Mr. Mutawakil was "never a commander" and "never had armed men of his own" which would fit Mr. Karzai's spokesman's criteria of, directly at least, not being one of "those Taliban whose hands were polluted with people’s blood and they are not known criminals (even though thousands of ex-Taliban soldiers had already been recruited into the Afghan army by January 2002).
But this is hard to square away with Mr. Karzai's statement that (Associated Press, 25 April 2004):
"Our problem is mainly with the top Taliban -- who may number no more than 150 people -- who had links with al Qaeda. Those people are the enemies of Afghanistan and we are against them. But those Taliban who are doing jobs and tilling the fields and working as shopkeepers, we want to welcome those Taliban."
A broad-based government
Karzai said he wants Afghan clerics to be in parliament like Pakistans pro-Taliban Islamist leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, from the Pakistans six-party Islamist alliance which swept to victory in North West Frontier Province and holds the balance of power in the federal parliament."I want our Taliban and our mullahs (clerics) to come and do the same," Dawn quoted Karzai saying.
"It is really unfair that the mullahs of our neighbours are getting voted (in) and our mullahs are getting blown up and are killing themselves and having a miserable life.
"They should also enjoy a good life, as others are doing."
Karzai in touch with Taliban for peace in Afghanistan, Agence France-Press, 25 August 2004
"We want everyone to come back and learn from their mistakes," said Arif Noorzai, Minister for Frontier and Tribal Affairs."Excluding these people has only created problems. The idea is to have a broad-based government in which these forces can participate so they can't be used by other countries or interests."
Afghans in peace talks with Taliban, The Sunday Times, 31 May 2004
Afghanistan is in a precarious situation. While the number of Taliban members engaged in fighting is estimated to be in the thousands (and less than 10,000) the movement still has wide support from the Pashtun people who make up 40% of Afghanistan's population. Whether the "reformed" ex-Taliban leaders will be able to attract support from the Taliban faithful is uncertain. Mr. Omah was reported to have immediately "disowned" Mr. Mutawakil upon hearing of the news, although his ex-communication probably occurred a few years ago upon his defection. Within the Taliban, Mr. Omah's voice is generally undisputed. Defections from the Taliban were a lot easier a few years ago when the threat and actuality of superior firepower, particularly from the air, on the part of the United States came into play. But a resurgent Taliban, engaged in guerrilla warfare, are proving a lot tougher to deal with. And while a chequebook being waved around may prove handy for recruiting those more malleable Taliban sympathisers in a country where it is said that you cannot buy an Afghan but can rent him, loyalties can easily be switched.
It is somewhat troubling that while the stated purpose of Mr. Karzai and the United States to have an Afghanistan free of the Taliban organisation in power, former leaders such as Mr. Mutawakil, the former health minister Mullah Ghous and the former intelligence minister Mullah Mohammad Khaksar are being recruited for government posts, not to mention positive referrals being made by Mr. Karzai towards the Pro-Taliban Islamist in Pakistan, Maulana Fazlur Rehman. What short-term gains might be made in drawing these "forces" away from other "interests" or "countries" could easily be overtaken in the medium- to long-term by the bad example this sets.
And this all surely raises the point that if there are indeed moderate Taliban "who are doing jobs and tilling the fields and working as shopkeepers," surely, at best, they are the only ones who should be recruited, so that further "mistakes" will not have to be unlearned in the future.
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