A cleverly engineered plan by the Taliban delineated and executed successfully resulted in the killing of the soft spoken Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the Afghan peace council, is surely a vile act. It can, however, be interpreted as the killing of the prospect of peace in Afghanistan altogether.
Apparently, the Taliban who had been going along the entire reconciliation process, were not actually motivated by the thought of peace but were harbouring ill feelings towards this scheme thus ended up killing the one who was leading the cause after they gained his trust.
Either the peace process was going against the desires of the Taliban who had always refused settlement of any sort without the US withdrawal or the slain peace leader was unable to convince them of the benefits reconciliation could lead to in Afghanistan point towards the undeniable fact that the process in itself had led to nothing so far and had turned out as a complete failure. How does one preach peace on one side while pressuring for action on the other? Surely the militants are no fools to be duped by a cosmetic reconciliation scheme that serves only to project a positive face of the US and Afghan government.
Another interpretation may lead us to believe that the Taliban are looking for peace in earnest that the defunct peace process had been mocking for such a long time. The Taliban have known to target those who either pose a threat to them, restrain their activities or for creating fear among masses.
There seemed no point in attacking a person who had little or no effect upon their activities. So is it fear they want to instil or just to prove that the insurgency is far from over? This episode, however, should not stall the process, but should serve as a point where the Afghan government rethinks and renews it in earnest, taking all major stakeholders on board so that it achieves desired results that are agreeable to all.
DR SAFA RAHMAN
Islamabad
