Islamists: We’ll sign peace agreement on Saturday
[Islamabad] The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) welcomed the agreement between the US and the Afghan Taliban for a reduction in violence across Afghanistan meant to pave the way for sustainable peace.
Dr. Yousef al-Othaimeen, secretary-general of the Jeddah-based OIC, the second-largest intergovernmental organization after the United Nations with 57 member states spread over four continents, late on Sunday expressed the OIC’s “full support and readiness to offer help, in any way possible, towards successful advancement of the intra-Afghan talks through an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process.”
The seven-day “reduction in violence” between the US and the Afghan Taliban began on Friday night. It is the fruit of the first such agreement in the US’s longest war.
Suhail Shaheen, the Afghan Taliban’s Qatar-based spokesperson, told The Media Line: “The Taliban are honestly and strictly following the reduction in violence agreement with the United States.”
“The peace agreement will be signed on 29 February 2020, in Doha,” he said.
“We [the Afghan Taliban] assure the world that now Afghanistan soil will not be allowed to be used against the security and the sovereignty of any state,” he continued.
“Afghanistan will be a country where our people can live a peaceful and prosperous life under the Islamic norms,” Shaheen said.
Meanwhile, Mutlaq Bin Majed Al-Qahtani, Qatar’s special envoy for counterterrorism and mediation in conflict resolution, visited the Afghan capital on Sunday and met with President Ashraf Ghani. The envoy told reporters in Kabul that all the stakeholders, as well as UN Security Council officials and representatives of the countries that assisted in the peace process, would attend the signing ceremony in Doha.
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Syed Jalal Haidar, a Kabul-based security analyst, told The Media Line that “the peace deal has bolstered hopes that America’s longest war is about to reach its logical end.” The interim agreement to reduce violence is set to ensure respect for the cease-fire during the seven-day trial period, “which will determine the direction of a future peace deal,” he added.
“The question now circulating is, ‘How will the US respond if a militant blows up a suicide vest in the capital Kabul, killing scores of human beings,” Haidar said.
“Similarly, if US warplanes bomb the bases of the Islamic State, what will the Taliban’s response be? The situation is more than fragile,” he said.
Haidar further said that “the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan [in 2001] without any concrete evidence or satisfactory justification, which has severely damaged the country and regional peace as well. Credit must be given to Trump and his team who engaged the Taliban at the dialogue table and realized that the only viable solution in Afghanistan is a political one.
“Undoubtedly this is good and historic news, but after the withdrawal of foreign forces, mutual resentments among the various ethnic and other groups [in Afghanistan] must be reduced; otherwise, the world will witness another series of catastrophic and bloody events, as we saw after the USSR withdrawal [following the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War],” he said.
Haidar added that there are “elements present in [President] Ashraf Ghani’s circle who could sabotage the peace deal,” and that “US officials are monitoring the situation closely.”
Irina Tsukerman, a New York-based national security and foreign policy expert, told The Media Line that “the US-Afghan Taliban peace deal is “neither a deal nor about peace.” The Taliban has not conclusively agreed to permanently lay down its arms; it is, however, likely to carry out in good faith any temporary concessions [it has made], as it is backed by state actors with a stake in forcing the US out of Afghanistan.”
“Rather, the US is negotiating the terms of its surrender and withdrawal, having admitted that it has neither the political will nor the vision nor the strategy to force the Taliban to surrender,” Tsukerman said.
She continued, “This is due to the US failure to acknowledge and address the state actors that have fueled, armed and weaponized the Taliban.”
“Unfortunately, Afghanistan has received a very limited coverage in the US media, nor have the [successive US] administrations communicated to the American people effectively and honestly about the geopolitical importance of Afghanistan, the stakes, the US interest, and what it would take to achieve clear, definable goals, which were [in any case] never clarified or defined,” Tsukerman said.
For these reasons, “an average American, not following the events too closely, is likely to celebrate withdrawal, but those who are more informed, however, will disagree with giving up Afghanistan to the Taliban without achieving anything and allowing a return to the status quo ante.
“This episode weakens the US’s status as a superpower and sends a message [that America is] a confused, unreliable, weak and poor ally.”
“As a result, more countries will turn to Russia and China, for a sense of consistent policies if nothing else, while Iran uses this opportunity to recruit additional followers and to sow more instability in the region and beyond,” Tsukerman said.
Brig. Gen. (ret.) Haris Nawaz, a Karachi-based defense analyst, told The Media Line that “Pakistan is not interested in what the Afghan government feels about the US-Afghanistan Taliban peace negotiations; what we are interested in is ensuring that Afghan Taliban and US officials sit across the table to find a peace solution” as soon as possible.
“Pakistan has made tremendous efforts to bring both sides to the negotiating table in Doha, efforts which were duly acknowledged time after time by US President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Special Envoy [for Afghanistan Reconciliation] Zalmay Khalilzad.”
Nawaz further told The Media Line that “the Afghan Taliban wants complete withdrawal of the US troops; meanwhile, the US officials are insisting to keep some US troops to safeguard the US installation inside the country. In any case, a lot of work remains to be done to resolve this issue.
“The Afghan Taliban has significantly changed their hard-line policy, and now they are eager to render a guarantee to the international community that they will not allow Afghan soil to be used for cross-border terrorism,” Nawaz said.