The taste of the three-day peace in Afghanistan lingers with everyone contemplating ways and means to making it permanent.
This was one of the key occupations during two days of engagement at the track-II Afghanistan-Pakistan bilateral dialogue held in Islamabad on June 28-29.
Originally scheduled for June 27-28, it had to be postponed by a day due to the unwarranted cancellation of PIA flight from Kabul to Islamabad on June 26. The pitiable apathy on the part of the sole national airline speaks volumes of dysfunctional state institutions. In the context of enhancing connectivity between the two neighbours, PIA should be operating multiple flights daily rather than just four flights every week – and that, too, using a dilapidated version of the ATRs. For comparison, their Afghan counterpart, KAM, operates a Boeing on the same route.
Lt. Gen. (R) Nasser Khan Janjua, who was to be the chief guest at the inaugural session on June 27, had resigned as the National Security Adviser a day earlier. He, however, made a special presentation on June 29 stating that Afghanistan and Pakistan have been “partners in pain and suffering”. He urged them to transit to becoming “partners in peace and progress” instead.
He bemoaned the fact that Pakistan was seen through the prism of failures in Afghanistan. He also cited the lack of internal unity in Afghanistan and the conflicting strategic objectives of the key regional players as other principal reasons for lack of movement on the front of bringing peace to Afghanistan.
This was the third meeting in a series which commenced last year with two rounds, one in Kabul and the other in Islamabad. The project is jointly sponsored by the Regional Peace Institute (RPI) and the Royal Danish Defence College (RDDC).
The umbrella theme for this round was “Approaching Peace Talks: Stakeholders, Challenges and Prospects” with sub-themes focusing on subjects including talking with the non-state actors, sub-national peace arrangements and the role of the intelligence agencies in paving the way for a peace deal.
In addition to the Afghan and Pakistani delegations including parliamentarians, former diplomats, military personnel, think-tank representatives, media professionals and civil society activists, there was also a delegation of RDDC and three prominent international scholars including Dr. Barnett R. Rubin, Felix Kuhn and Dr. Antonio Giustozzi who participated in what turned out to be a stimulating engagement spread over two days.
One specific purpose of conducting the dialogue at this juncture was to generate actionable recommendations for near-future implementation to support the current peace process in Afghanistan. The seminar deliberately focused on opportunities and prospects rather than identifying root causes of the conflict which, time and again, have led the stabilisation process towards a dead end. The recent events, particularly the successful Eid-ceasefire, contributed to generating a positive and inspiring environment that promises better tidings for the near as well as the distant future.
In the break-out sessions chaired by the international experts, the delegates discussed and developed a list of ideas for approaching the peace talks in Afghanistan. Among others, these included:
Strengthening intelligence-sharing and cooperation among services, exemplified by monthly regular meetings between the task forces in NDS and ISI;
Acknowledging that sub-national peace arrangements have very serious limitations due to their infringement of the core political issues in Afghanistan;
Recognising that a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban involves offering something that, in fact, one is not willing to concede. Pursuit of peace involves unpleasant concessions, but remains essential to the ultimate success of negotiations. The parties, therefore, must display courage to bargain in order to achieve progress, and urging the US to engage in talks with the Taliban. This was not likely to harm the Afghan government in the current peace process.
In formulating these recommendations, several participants noted that, in the last six months, the relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan had experienced a steady improvement with emphasis on intelligence-sharing The absence of the instinctive blame-game from the seminar was a visible and pleasant manifestation of the positive environment that currently exists between the two neighbouring countries.
Peace comes at a cost. This is the essential sacrifice that has to be made by all parties involved for the cause of peace that would be of benefit to them, and, more particularly, to the people of Afghanistan who have languished from one day to the next over the last forty years dreaming that a time would come when they would be rid of the sound of fire and the smell of burning flesh. Peace is their right as much as that of any other people. They are children of no lesser God and should not be treated as ones.
As LG (R) Janjua said in his presentation that Afghanistan had become “a lacerating wound of the world” which the “world needed to heal”. It, indeed, is the responsibility of the world, more notably the parties directly involved in the conflict, to take effective measures for bringing peace to this war-ravaged land.
In the words of Dr. Rubin, the US presence in Afghanistan is no longer accepted either by the Afghans or other countries of the region. It was time to make the next move. The question of the end-state was about how Afghanistan would be effectively integrated into the global security architecture. In this context, a strong common interest needed to be developed in making Afghanistan peaceful and sustainable. The role of China in this was specially highlighted.
The lingering fear among the Afghans was that the Taliban would come back not wearing their peace caps, but fully loaded with their weapons and may unleash another wave of terror. This was a big challenge for Pakistan to address.
Another query that came up for debate was whether the Taliban would be demobilised in Pakistan in the interest of peace in Afghanistan?
There was a general consensus that the world had allowed the war in Afghanistan to simmer along. This could not go any further. It had to be stopped. The world needed to get together for the cause of peace in Afghanistan and for ending the blistering sufferings of the Afghan people.
To secure this objective, the conference urged the US to engage in talks with the Taliban without any delay.
The organisers hoped that the recommendations developed at the conference would be used by the respective state authorities as engines for generating momentum to peace talks. The main question was how and when these formulations will be picked up by the decision-makers in order to initiate implementation to pursue the ray of peace, though fleeting, which had emerged on the horizon.
The writer is the founder and chief executive of Regional Peace Institute, one of the organizers of the Track-II dialogue.
Published in Daily Times, July 1st 2018.
