Afghan peace efforts ‘stumbling’

Afghan government efforts to bring the Taliban into peace talks are stumbling and bold steps were needed to ensure that a council spearheading the process can win the trust of insurgents, said a presidential adviser yesterday.

Assadullah Wafa also expressed concern that Afghans, who have been subjected to one conflict after another, were losing hope that peace was possible from a process that so far has been shrouded in secrecy and conflicting views of likely success.

The government has made some contacts with the Taliban, who have made a comeback after being toppled by a US invasion in 2001, but there are no signs that full-fledged peace talks will happen anytime soon.

“The talk about peace talks is just futile,” said Wafa, an adviser to President Hamid Karzai and a former governor in Afghanistan’s most volatile provinces.

Karzai set up a 70-member High Peace Council two years ago, with Wafa as a member, to negotiate an end to the war, now dragging into its eleventh year.

It is meant to represent all ethnic and political alliances in a bid to reach out to the Taliban leadership and convince insurgent fighters to join the government.

Wafa, however, has questioned its effectiveness, and said its wide makeup actually made it difficult for the government to reach out to militant groups.

“I have told President Karzai and he promised that there would be repair of the peace council. I am not afraid to speak out, but it doesn’t much bear fruit. There must be a review,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“I think genuine people aren’t part of the peace council, or there are individuals who the Taliban fought in the past or some communist baqaya (remains) in the council, because of whom the Taliban aren’t interested in talks.”