- Anytime soon?
A new trend is clearly emerging in the Afghan endgame, if it can be called that just yet. Not only are the Taliban gaining more ground, they are also successfully undermining and isolating President and his government in Kabul. They were not made part of the Taliban talks with the US. And now they were just not invited at the Taliban’s conference with opposition leaders in Moscow. That the insurgents broke bread and offered prayers with the likes of Hamid Karzai and a host of other senior Afghan politicians, with Ghani and his boys nowhere to be seen, indeed raises questions about how far these negotiations can really go.
Already the government has ruled out abiding by anything that is agreed upon in any of these talks. And the Taliban have not only always wanted and end to the present administration to make way for an interim government, in addition to an immediate US pullout, they have also now demanded a new constitution; one that would include everybody under a more Sharia compliant system than presently implemented. Don’t count on Ghani to agree to any of this, especially as his fate hangs in the balance since the presidential election is just round the corner.
Yet all this movement indicates that everybody concerned with Afghanistan in any way is now moving pieces across the chessboard to finally bring this ugly war to an end. Some opposition leaders in Moscow pressed upon the Taliban to show flexibility just enough to sit with the government, without which the whole process will undoubtedly hit a brick wall sooner or later. So there are still far too many unknowns in the equation to expect the war to end immediately. For example, there’s no guarantee of quantifiable progress even if the two do talk. Plus the Afghan government’s own attitude doesn’t help, as Khalilzad was forced to concede, since some are bending over backwards to talk to the insurgents while others are still ridiculing the idea. For once, though, the spotlight has shifted from Pakistan to Afghanistan itself, and no better time than now for the process to become Afghan-led and Afghan-owned finally.
