Afghan Taliban restarts talks with USA in Qatar
Senior Taliban leaders tell Channel 4 News that talks with the United States have started again in Qatar – intransigence on all sides is blamed for the failure of talks earlier this year.
On 3 January 2012 the Taliban opened what they termed a ‘diplomatic office’ in Qatar, with the aim of holding direct talks with the US to find a peaceful settlement to the decade-old Afghan conflict. But the early talks failed.
Senior Taliban leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a five-member Taliban delegation, headed by Tayyab Agha, brother-in-law and spokesman of the Taliban supreme commander Mullah Mohammad Omar, had landed in Qatar three weeks ago and held two new rounds of talks with the US officials.
As well as Tayyab Agha, the delegation also includes Maulvi Shahabuddin Dilawar, a former envoy of Taliban regime in Saudi Arab. The Taliban leadership however decided to keep identity of the remaining three members of the delegation secret as they were not expecting any immediate breakthrough from the talks.
Prior agreement
According to Taliban sources, the previous talks with the Americans had annoyed some Taliban groups and field commanders.
However, this time the Taliban leaders said a meeting was called before leaving of the delegation to Qatar in which representatives of all militant groups were present and approved holding talks with the Americans, but at the same time decided to continue their fight against all the foreign forces as well as the Afghan government. Besides some Taliban groups, Mulla Mohammad Omar himself was not happy with the Taliban for holding talks with the US in Qatar last time. However, this time, all groups and Ameerul Momineen approved talks with the US, saying that talks were part of the war,” a senior Taliban leader, privy to the Qatar negotiations said.
He said their talks last time with the Americans were onlyabout the exchange of prisoners, but the US officials and Afghan government started asking them to announce a ceasefire before any prisoner swap.
Possible prisoner exchange
The Taliban have said that their main motivation for setting up an office in Qatar was hopes that it would help achieve a prisoners swap, especially of their five top commanders held at the Guantanamo Bay base since 2002: Mulla Fazal Akhund, Noorullah Noori, Abdul Haq Waseeq, Khairullah Khairkhwa and Mohammad Nabi.
Their talks with the US had been over a possible exchange of an American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured in June 2009 by Taliban militants in Afghanistan’s Paktika province which shares a border with Pakistan’s South Waziristan. Responsibility for kidnapping the Bergdahl was initially claimed by Maulvi Sangeen, a senior commander of the powerful Haqqani terror network.
Taliban leaders accused the Afghan government of not playng straight with the Americans or the Taliban because they did not want the US to hold direct talks with the Taliban and therefore the Afghan government undermined the earlier negotiations in Qatar by demanding the five Taliban prisoners should be brought to Kabul after their release from the US detention center in Guantanamo bay in Cuba.
Top commanders imprisoned in Guantanamo
According to Taliban sources, Mulla Fazal Akhund, who belongs to the Kakar tribe and is from Derawad in the central Urozgan province, was the Taliban army chief at the time of his capture. He was reportedly leading his fighters in northern Afghanistan where he surrendered to Uzbek warlord General Abdur Rasheed Dostum on condition that he won’t be delivered to the US. Gen Dostum later handed over him and several hundred other Taliban prisoners to the US reportedly taking money from the Americans.
Noorullah Noori, who hails from Ghazni province, was the governor of Balkh province, while Khairullah Khairkhwa served as Afghanistan’s interior minister during the Taliban rule and also remained the governor of Herat province. He comes from to Spin Boldak village in Kandahar province sited near the Pakistani border town of Chaman.
Abdul Haq Waseeq was the deputy Taliban intelligence chief when he was captured. He comes from Paktia province. Similarly, Mohammad Nabi was an important military commander when the Taliban were in power.
The Taliban said they had the same stance and will announce ceasefire once when all the foreign forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan.
According to Taliban sources, the Afghan foreign minister visited Qatar a few days ago but returned home without having a meeting with the Taliban delegation.
“The Taliban and Americans wanted Pakistan to be included in talks, while the Afghan government opposed Pakistan’s participation. Similarly, the Afghan foreign minister did not want the Taliban office in Qatar to have a legal status to develop contacts with the international community,” the Taliban leader said.
Similarly, the Taliban claimed the Afghan government wanted the talks to be held either in UAE or in Saudi Arabia, instead of Qatar, but the Taliban leader Mulla Omar was in favour of Qatar.