'Lethal' talks with Taliban
After Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination in Afghanistan, Channel 4 News Foreign Editor Ben de Pear says “there were few bigger targets for the Taliban”.
Chairman of the Afghan reconciliation commission, and a former Afghan president, there were few bigger targets for the Taliban than Burhanuddin Rabbani, writes Channel 4 News Foreign Editor Ben de Pear.
His assassination, executed, according to the Taliban spokesman, after a brilliant undercover operation, leaves President Karzai’s efforts at negotiating a settlement with the Taliban in tatters, and heightens the pervading sense of anxiety and fear in the capital that the Taliban can strike anyone and anywhere with impunity.
When President Karzai appointed Rabbani as chairman of the commission in 2010, he hailed it as the best chance for a negotiated end to the war, but Rabbani, who was overthrown by the Taliban in 1996, was hated by them and many other Afghans for the destruction and chaos of the civil war which engulfed Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal.
His appointment as Karzai’s main peacebroker puzzled many, and the desperation of the government to talk to the Taliban seems to be what led to his undoing.
According to Taliban spokesman Zabhullah Mujahid, the Taliban used the desperate and repeated invitations by Rabbani to senior Taliban leaders to attend peace talks to gain access to Rabbani for two “articulate and well-trained” fighters who developed contacts with the former Afghan president. But the aim was always to finally eliminate him.
Mujahid told Channel 4 News “Both of them were frequently meeting him at his Kabul home and secured trust of Rabbani and his guards. They were telling Rabbani that they would soon bring senior Taliban leadership to the negotiating table with him.”
When the meeting actually happened, the spokesman went on to say, such was the regularity of their visits, they weren’t checked, and when they falsely announced that senior Taliban would attend talks, a delighted Rabbani emerged to greet them.
“As soon as Rabbani came three steps forward to hug Mohammad Masoom, he triggered his explode-filled jacket killing Rabbani, Taliban militant Wahid Yar and four security guards present at the house.”
Ominously, he added that similar plans for assassinating more leaders were well advanced. No-one ever thought talks with the Taliban would be easy. At present they would seem to be lethal.
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