Afghan president names council amid efforts to secure Taliban peace deal

AFGHANISTAN’S president has appointed a council for national reconciliation, which will have the final say on whether the government will sign a peace deal with the Taliban after what are expected to be protracted negotiations with the insurgents.

The negotiations were envisaged under a Us-taliban peace agreement signed in February as intra-afghan talks to decide the war-torn country’s future.

However, their start has been hampered by a series of delays that have frustrated Washington.

Some had expected the negotiations to begin earlier this month.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree late on Saturday establishing the 46-member council, led by his former rival in last year’s presidential election, Abdullah Abdullah, who is now in the government.

The council is separate from a 21-member negotiating team which Mr Ghani appointed in March and which is expected to travel to the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office, for intra-afghan talks.

The council will have the final say and will ultimately decide on the points that the negotiating team takes up with the Taliban.

Mr Abdullah’s appointment to head the reconciliation efforts followed a powersharing deal he signed in May with Mr Ghani to end the political deadlock after last year’s election – a vote in which Mr Abdullah had also declared himself a winner.

The High Council for National Reconciliation is made up of an array of Afghan political figures, including current and former officials, and nine women representatives, one of whom was named Mr Abdullah’s deputy.

Mr Ghani also appointed former president Hamid Karzai to the council but his predecessor rejected the appointment in a statement, saying he declines to be part of any government structure.

Also on the council are mujahedeen and jihadi leaders who fought against the Soviet Union in the 1980s but who were also involved in Afghanistan’s brutal civil war that followed their takeover in 1992 that left 50,000, mostly civilians, dead in Kabul.

Among them is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who signed a peace deal with Mr Ghani in 2016 but was previously declared a terrorist by the United States. The council also includes Abdur Rasool Sayyaf, who was the inspiration for the Philippine terrorist group Abu Sayyaf.

During the 1992-1996 civil war, Sayyaf’s fighters killed thousands of minority Shiite Muslims led by a rival warlord.

However, the establishment of the council may not sit well with the Taliban, who have appointed just one 20-member negotiating team that has the authority to make final decisions.

The Taliban team answers only to the insurgents’ leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhunzada.