Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government talks to the Taliban every day through intermediaries, according to an interview by Australia’s SBS television for broadcast on Tuesday.
“We talk to the Taliban every day. We were talking to them just a few days ago somewhere around this region,” Karzai said in an interview taped a week ago in Kabul with SBS, adding his contact with the group’s one-eyed leader Mullah Omar was through indirect means.
“(But) not personally,” Karzai said when asked if he had spoken with Omar. “I mean not directly, person to person. But through intermediaries, yes.” Karzai and many Western analysts say the reclusive leader is based in Quetta.
Karzai also stressed that peace talks with the Taliban are key to regional stability and bringing peace as well to Pakistan.
“It’s no longer Afghanistan that’s the subject of conversation, or the issue. It’s Pakistan as well. It’s peace in Pakistan as well. It’s stability in Pakistan as well,” he said. The interview was recorded before Karzai’s visit to Islamabad last week, where he upset Pakistan by asking for access to Afghan Taliban leaders belonging to the so-called Quetta Shura.
Karzai said he was also keen to work together with Islamabad to help advance peace talks with the Taliban. “We as the Afghan people and government are willing to help Pakistan work for peace in Afghanistan and work for peace in Pakistan, together,” Karzai said, adding that Afghanistan was making progress on security in the eleventh year of a costly war, local and foreign support for which is souring.
He said the Taliban would not return to power in a total capacity. “I don’t think the Taliban will ever come back to take Afghanistan, no,” he said. “Two years ago I would have been uncertain and unwilling to give you an answer as firm as I do today. The Afghan people will not go back to the nothing of 10 years ago.”
Meanwhile, a group of Afghan officials from Kandahar has left Afghanistan for Quetta to meet Taliban commanders there and discuss peace efforts, the head of the provincial peace council said on Tuesday.
“We have been in contact with mid-level Taliban commanders in Quetta for some time. In the last 10 days, our peace council delegation have gone to Quetta three times in twos and threes,” Kandahar peace council head Ata Mohammad Ahmadi told Reuters.
