US envoy seeking support to shake up Afghan peace process
KABUL/ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The US special envoy to Afghanistan proposed a shake-up of the stalled peace process this week, including an interim government and a conference of key players, according to diplomatic and political sources, but his plan faced immediate objections by the warring sides.
Afghan-born US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad is on a visit to Kabul, Doha and other regional capitals, his first since US President Joe Biden’s administration began reviewing its options for the peace process and as time runs out before a May 1 US troop withdrawal deadline.
With peace negotiations in the Qatari capital making little progress and violence in Afghanistan escalating, Khalilzad is trying to build consensus around alternative options with all Afghan sides and key regional players, sources said.
“[The United States] thinks Doha isn’t working and needs impetus and an alternate approach,” said one diplomatic source who closely follows the process.
In Kabul, Khalilzad met Abdullah Abdullah, the chief peace envoy, President Ashraf Ghani and other political and civil society leaders, including former president Hamid Karzai.
Three diplomatic sources, two sources on the teams of political leaders who met with Khalilzad and two international sources in Kabul said one of the envoy’s main proposals was an interim government arrangement, referred to as a participatory or representative government.
A former Afghan government official familiar with the matter said Khalilzad shared a document detailing the power-sharing proposal and that it revised a paper he circulated in December.
Another proposal was a meeting with a similar format to the 2001 Bonn conference, to involve representatives from a wide range of Afghan parties meeting in person while international agencies and diplomats push them to a solution.
Anti-Taliban leaders met under international auspices in the German city of Bonn after the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the insurgents from power and agreed on a provisional administration and a roadmap for forming a permanent government and writing a new constitution.
“We’re considering a number of different ideas that might accelerate the process,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Friday.
The two international sources said Khalilzad is asking the United Nations to take a lead role and call the conference.
Spokespeople for the UN mission in Afghanistan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two of the sources said the conference could be held in Turkey, but a third cautioned that location might meet resistance from Western nations. Other countries including Germany and Uzbekistan were being considered.
Khalilzad’s plans immediately encountered objections from both the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Ghani made a fiery speech in Afghanistan’s parliament on Saturday, repeating his refusal to step aside for an interim government. “Any institution can write a fantasy on a piece of paper and suggest a solution for Afghanistan” he said, warning any transfer of power would have to take place through elections as required by the constitution.
Two international officials in Kabul said Ghani’s fierce opposition would be a problem for the plan.
“The problem here is that Ghani can blame the United States directly... by challenging his legitimacy and considering an interim government it implies they are undermining the democratic process,” one of the officials said.
A Taliban leader in Doha who spoke on condition of anonymity said Khalilzad raised the possibility of an interim government and a conference with the insurgents’ negotiating team, as well as asking for a ceasefire or reduction in violence by 60-70%.
“Khalilzad has come with some ideas and his top agenda is the intra-Afghan dialog to deliver some tangible results and very soon,” he said.
He said the Taliban would not join an interim government, but was not opposed to one being formed.
The development of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kiev has been repeatedly thwarted in recent months by Ukrainian government delays in issuing permits to advance the project.
In particular, attempts by the center to have a synagogue built and opened at the site in time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 were stymied by the failure of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to issue the necessary permits.
In addition, plans by the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center to have an exhibition ready for the 80th anniversary of the massacres at the site this September are currently on hold, again due to the fact that the ministry has not provided the necessary permits.
Although final permit requests were only submitted at the end of January and beginning of February, pre-application processes began back in October, and sources with the center said that numerous intermediary steps for obtaining the permits have faced repeated delays ever since.
Chair of the Board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center Natan Sharansky wrote to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month to request his assistance in advancing the project.
In his letter, seen by The Jerusalem Post in English, Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and ex-Israeli cabinet minister said that failure to immediately issue the permits would make it impossible to complete the exhibition by September 29, the anniversary of the atrocities at Babyn Yar.
Neither the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture nor the Office of the President responded to repeated requests for comment by the Post.
The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center project was initiated in 2016 by four Jewish Ukrainian billionaires as a private initiative, but has since received the endorsement and support of the Ukrainian government and Zelensky himself.
The center, expected to cost $100 million and scheduled for completion in 2025, is a massive and ambitious project at the Babyn Yar site, to educate about and commemorate the Nazi mass murder that took place there, outside Kiev in 1941, and the Holocaust in eastern Europe more generally.
The complex at the site of the Babyn Yar ravine is expected to include two museums, a religious and spiritual center and numerous other structures and installations, and will cover an area of some 150 hectares.
Because the undertaking is so large, the organization developing the center has sought to open several installations and exhibitions for notable commemoration dates before the entire project can be completed.
In his letter to Zelensky, Sharansky pointed specifically to the failure to obtain permits for the planned synagogue and the exhibition for the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar atrocities as examples of the delays the project has experienced.
Sharansky said the delays have resulted in “the loss of the unique opportunity to make a significant
step toward the implementation of the project” and to demonstrate “the seriousness of our shared intentions and our engagement with the Ukrainian government.”
Sharansky added that numerous leaders of states and Jewish communities would be “willing to take an active part in the commemoration ceremonies” for the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar atrocities, but that the delays in receiving the permits for the slated exhibition for that date endanger these plans.
“Failure to obtain the necessary permits and approvals by the end of this month [referring to February] would render impossible completion of the Project in due time, for which case we cannot be held liable,” he said, and concluded by requesting that Zelensky arrange for the permits to be granted.
The site for the synagogue that was scheduled to open in time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January is immediately adjacent to the one and only place of memorial at the Babyn Yar site, and includes elaborate decorative designs referencing the interior of the historic Gwozdziec and Khodorkovskaya synagogues of Ukraine from the
17th and 18th centuries.
The exhibition for the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacres is to be created within the old office building of a Jewish cemetery now part of government land at the Babyn Yar site.
According to sources within the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center organization, a temporary installation that was created for the 79th anniversary of the atrocities in September last year has also faced bureaucratic delays, though it was eventually completed on time.
The same sources said that Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko, who served as the CEO of the 1+1 Media Group in Ukraine before his election to the Ukrainian parliament in 2019, has interfered with the issuance of the permits and said he was behind the delays to the various projects.
“We are about eight months away from the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy,” wrote Sharansky in his letter to Zelensky. “We ask you to use your power and, in the coming days, to arrange for us to be granted the appropriate permits that will allow the work to begin.”