Minorities still fear Taleban
Hazara leader expresses unease
Kabul – Scepticism is growing in Afghanistan’s ethnic communities that a peace deal can be struck with the Taleban, under whose rule they were brutalised and persecuted, with many fearing a return to civil war, a prominent Hazara minority leader says.
Mohammad Mohaqiq said he was deeply worried about Nato plans to pull out combat troops by the end of 2014, and a French proposal to leave a year earlier.
‘‘It is silly to say al Qaeda and Taleban can come together with Afghans, or [with] our allies who have come to this country,’’ Mohaqiq said yesterday in an interview at his heavily guarded Kabul mansion.
‘‘I don’t believe in a miracle occurring – that the Taleban will change their way of thought, accept the Afghan constitution, believe in democracy and the vote of the people.’’
Many Hazaras suffered badly under Taleban rule between 1996 and 2001. The Shi’ite Muslim minority saw many of their communities levelled by the mainly Sunni Muslim and ethnic Pashtun Taleban, and their people killed or scattered into the mountains.
Officials plan to hold initial talks with Taleban representatives in Saudi Arabia soon, in parallel with secret contacts that have been under way between the United States and the insurgency since 2010.
Afghan officials also hope to press Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar during a visit to Kabul this week for access to Taleban leaders in Pakistan, including the jailed co-founder of the movement, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Mohaqiq, head of the opposition Shi’ite Hezb-e-wahdat (Unity Party) and a member of parliament, fought the Soviets in the 1980s and was part of the anti-taleban Northern Alliance, which splintered amid political deal-making under Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Alliance members are coalescing again, bringing ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras into a common front to oppose the blueprint for Taleban peace negotiations masterminded by the US.
Other ethnic group members, such as Tajik leader and Afghan National Front chief Ahmad Zia Masood – whose brother once led opposition commanders fighting the Taleban – said this month he also did not believe a deal could be reached with the Taleban, and called for more involvement in peace negotiations.
Mohaqiq, whose predecessor Abdul Ali Mazari was stripped naked, mutilated and dropped to his death from a helicopter by the Taleban in 1995, said he believed thousands of insurgents had been trained across the porous mountain border in Pakistan during a decade of war with Nato and Afghan forces.
‘‘They are waiting for Nato forces to withdraw from Afghanistan to attack. We can anticipate what is going to happen.’’
Mohaqiq said the Afghan army, made up largely of Pashtuns, was incapable of protecting minority Afghans if it turned out that the Taleban were using the promise of peace talks to stall and regroup, as some Afghanistan analysts have warned.
‘‘We are not very optimistic that the Taleban will join the peace process . . . support the government and work in a system together.’’