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| Afghanistan |
| Even as the Afghan war rages, the talking starts |
| 2009-03-23 |
| The red plastic sofas in the living room of Maulvi Mohammed Rahmani in Kabul's Deh Bori quarter are rarely empty these days. The pitted dirt road in front of the home of the tribal elder and former Taliban minister is as busy as the lumber yard behind it. "For a long time, no one came to see me, then our Arab brothers started coming, then our European friends and now, most recently, the Americans," he said last week. The cleric owes his sudden popularity to his leadership of a group of former Taliban who are now acting as a channel of communication to the insurgents waging a bitter war against coalition and Afghan forces across the south and east of Afghanistan. Since Rahmani and several others travelled to Saudi Arabia last year for a first meeting aimed at preparing a dialogue, revealed by the Observer, initiatives to find a negotiated solution to the conflict in Afghanistan have gathered pace -- now with the blessing of the new American administration. Last week, United States ambassador Bill Wood said that, although his government opposed anyone "shooting their way to power" and was against any agreement involving "power-sharing or an enclave for the Taliban", there was "room for discussion on the formation of political parties or running candidates for elections". "Insurgencies are like all wars: they end when there is an agreement," Wood said in an interview in the vast, heavily guarded US embassy in Kabul. "[The Taliban] have said 'no start of negotiations without prior departure of foreign forces'. That's not serious. Let's get serious." Such talk would have been inconceivable even six months ago. Now, in an astonishing U-turn, Kabul diplomats are privately discussing what concessions could conceivably be made to insurgents. There is talk of the Afghan government releasing certain prisoners from detention centres in return for a halt to attacks on government buildings and infrastructure such as schools or roads; the removal of key insurgents from United Nations blacklists, which render them diplomatic outlaws; and even changes to the Afghan constitution to allow a "political wing" of the Taliban to integrate disaffected, ultra-conservative, rural Pashtun tribes -- the insurgents' key constituency -- into the political process. The process has gathered pace since the meeting in Mecca last year. Dozens of such encounters between possible mediators are taking place. |
| Posted by:Fred |