Fresh efforts are afoot to revive Afghan peace process through Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) and the upcoming visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is a part of the same exercise.
The QCG involves top officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States of America (USA). A Taliban delegation had also attended the first meeting of the QCG held in Murree. Despite some initial breakthrough in the first QCG meeting, some elements in the Afghan government sabotaged the process by leaking the news of Mullah Omar to media just a day before the Muree Summit.
Well-placed sources informed Pakistan Today that the issue of revival of QCG mechanism cropped up during the recent meeting of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani at Astana on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit and both the leaders agreed to revive the peace process.
‘Both Dr Ghani and Prime Minister Sharif agreed to revive the QCG mechanism. The scheduled trip of Chinese foreign minister to Islamabad is also a part of the same efforts. However, the biggest challenge would be to convince the United States of America (USA) as the Trump administration looks dormant and undecided due to the ongoing review of Afghan Policy in Washington’, an official said requesting not being named.
The official said while China, Pakistan and Afghanistan have made up their minds to revive the QCG mechanism, the US administration looks undecided.
‘The meeting between Dr Ghani and PM Sharif coupled with Wang Yi’s upcoming visit reflects how much importance Pakistan and China give to a peaceful solution to Afghanistan quagmire. ‘Let’s see what is the response from the US’, the official said.
It is pertinent to mention here that successive peace process led by various countries to help bring warring factions in Afghanistan have failed to yield results. Once the QCG mechanism failed to make a headway, Russia had launched Moscow peace process.
After two successive parleys held in Moscow, US pulled out of the recently held summit, terming it useless. The Russia-led peace process had also involved key regional and global players including Pakistan, China, India, US, Iran and some central Asian states.
The Heart of Asia conference is another process which has failed to yield results. Primarily, Afghan Taliban, the key stakeholder in Afghan peace process, have stayed away from most of the peace initiatives. Out of all the peace initiatives, the QCG made a little headway as Taliban delegation led by former Taliban chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, had attended the dialogue.
However, soon afterwards, Mullah Mansour was killed in a drone strike near Naushki while he was on his way back to Afghanistan from Iran. Taliban took this assassination as retaliation and since then they have boycotted the peace overtures.
Experts believe that the recent huge bomb blasts inside green zone in Kabul have exposed the weakness of Afghan regime and it seems that the terrorists have penetrated the security forces of Afghanistan. Several but successive terrorist attacks in training institutions of Afghan Army and even terrorist attacks at US bases have also unleashed that Kabul regime has limited control. These attacks coupled with shrinking political support for Dr Ghani are compelling the Afghan government to revive the QCG.
The official said that perhaps Afghan government had realised the significance of the QCG as it was necessary that major players including US, China and Pakistan must push for the revival of peace process.
In Pakistan, Wang Yi, who is arriving on June 24, is likely to hold meetings with senior political and military leadership including Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.
Wang Yi would also visit Kabul to express the support of Beijing for the peace efforts and also he is likely to meet some western military commanders there.
