Peace elusive as Taliban snubs talks

No end to war as Afghan govt’s latest offer ignored

KABUL: With the Taliban shrugging off the Afghan government’s latest offers of a ceasefire and negotiations, peace seems as elusive as it has been for decades in this war-battered country, both for troops on the front lines and for civilians facing frequent attacks.

The Taliban has been gaining more ground in its annual spring offensive, ignoring President Ashraf Ghani’s calls for talks.

Hoping to end the nearly 17-year war, he had offered unprecedented incentives, including passports for insurgents and their families.

Ghani had also offered to work towards removing international sanctions against the group’s leaders and allowing the Taliban to open an official headquarters in the capital, Kabul.

But for that to happen, he stressed, a ceasefire must first be agreed on and the Taliban has to become a political group rather than an armed insurgency.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid recently reiterated the insurgents’ standing line that “the Americans are the ones continuing the war, supporting our enemies and bombing our country”.

“So, if there are talks, they should be with them (Americans),” Mujahid said over the phone. “Otherwise they won’t have any results.”

Since the start of the year, the Taliban has intensified attacks. On Jan 27, a suicide bomber drove an ambulance packed with explosives through a Kabul checkpoint, killing more than 100 people and wounding as many as 235.

The Taliban claimed that attack, as well as another, a week earlier, in which militants stormed a luxury hotel in Kabul, killing 22 people, including 14 foreigners, and setting off a 13-hour gunbattle.

At a June gathering in Kabul, the Afghan Ulema Council – an organisation of Muslim clerics – issued an edict against suicide attacks, saying they are haram, forbidden under Islamic law.

As the gathering wrapped up and the clerics were about to disband, another suicide bomber struck near the site, killing seven people.

Though that attack was claimed by the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, the Taliban issued a statement denouncing the conference and others like it as an “American process” and urged clerics to reject such gatherings.

The Taliban has meanwhile expanded its reach in the countryside. According to Mujahid, they now control 54 out of 388 districts across the country, with five districts seized in this year’s spring offensive.

At least seven out of 14 districts in the southern Helmand province are completely under Taliban control.

Analysts say about 80% of Helmand – prized for its vast opium poppy fields – has been under Taliban control since 2004, though urban centres had remained under government control.

Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish denies the Taliban’s claim, saying they control just 11 districts in the entire country.

But even Washington’s own Special Inspector- General for Afghan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, says more than half of Afghanistan is either under direct Taliban control or under its influence.

The United States and Nato have steadily drawn down forces in recent years from a peak of nearly 150,000, and in 2014 they shifted to a support and counter-terrorism role. The pressure is on to get some sort of peace process off the ground.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used an unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Monday to step up the Trump administration’s calls for peace talks.

“The region and the world are all tired of what is taking place here in the same way that the Afghan people are no longer interested in seeing war,” Pompeo said.

The Afghan people are no longer interested in seeing war.

Mike Pompeo