Afghan High Peace Council, Taliban and Northern Alliance to Meet in Paris This Week
Reuters reports that after the final French combat troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan on Saturday, Paris will host a meeting this week between the Afghan high peace council and the Taliban. It appears that talks have been ongoing for some time, but it is quite encouraging that the parties are now willing for it to be announced publicly that the discussions are taking place. From the Reuters story:
France said on Sunday officials from the Afghan government, the Taliban rebel movement and other factions would meet this week near Paris to discuss the country’s future as NATO troops prepare to pull out in 2014.
Speaking on RFI radio, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, whose country withdrew the last of its combat troops from Afghanistan on Saturday, said Afghan President Hamid Karzai had given his green light to the meeting.
“Discreet talks have been taking place between different factions for three years,” Fabius said.
“If you want peace, it’s usually between people who don’t agree, and over there they don’t talk to each other. So there will be discussions, but it won’t be negotiations.”
The story goes on to point out that both the exact date and location for the meeting will not be disclosed and that the location will be “entirely closed off”.
We get more on the meetings from Afghanistan’s Khaama Press:
A senior Afghan high peace council official said three members of the council will attend the Paris conference.
Abdul Hakim Mujahid a former Taliban group member and Haji Din Mohammad advisor to president Hamid Karzai are among the three officials who attend and meet the Taliban group members.
Farhadullah a spokesman for the Afghan high peace council said Afghan peace delegates will clarify the stance of Afghan peace council regarding the peace negotiations in Paris conference.
Meanwhile Abdul Hakim Mujahid who was presenting the Taliban group in United Nations and is currently a member of the Afghan high peace council said they will hold direct talks with the Taliban group members during the summit.
Mr. Mujahid said the conference is based on Afghanistan and only Afghans should decided how to resolve the current crisis and war in the country.
Significantly, the Reuters piece points out that the Northern Alliance also will be taking part in the meetings. Recall that the US supported the Northern Alliance in the overthrow of the Taliban after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Missing from both stories is any mention of US involvement in the peace talks. Instead, the US appears to be spending its energy at the current time trying to negotiate an agreement with Afghanistan that will provide blanket immunity for US troops staying beyond the planned end of 2014 end of combat operations by coalition forces. Also, Washington is consumed with developing a plan for how many of these US troops will remain behind and what their roles will be. Apparently, these efforts are a higher priority to the Obama administration than negotiating a peace that would make our presence unnecessary.
a lttle bit of forward movement – and movement away from violence.
glad to see this process begin.
Sorry to be OT, Jim, but have you seen this….MK/Ultra Monarch? LIBOR? General Electric? I must be crazy with these theories.
“The father of Newtown Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza is Peter Lanza who is a VP and Tax Director at GE Financial. The father of Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes is Robert Holmes, the lead scientist for the credit score company FICO. Both men were to testify before the US Sentate in the ongoing LIBOR scandal. The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. 16 international banks have been implicated in this ongoing scandal, accused of rigging contracts worth trillions of dollars. HSBC has already been fined $1.9 billion and three of their low level traders arrested.”
http://beforeitsnews.com/economics-and-politics/2012/12/2-mass-shootings-connected-to-libor-2447738.html
I’m glad that the US is not involved in those Paris talks. It will make it easier to (1) get a political settlement between the major factions in Afghanistan, (2) get the the US completely out of the country by taking away the “enemy” by securing more regional support for political stability.
The question is what role the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has in the talks. That is, has France invited them as observers? All of the frontline states to Afghanistan are either members or observers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which sponsored a conference in Istanbul a little over a year ago to get peace negotiations going.
will make for an interesting Terror Tuesday targeting meet-up. “So, who’s got the map of Paris?”
@rosalind: You won’t need a map just follow the drone.
I hope they can seat down and talk this through unlike Amerika.
The Taliban position on talks, at least earlier this year, has been that they are two-track, with talks with the U.S. going first.
From Qari Din Muhammad:
From Agha Jan Motassem:
I don’t what these Paris talks mean, or how to interpret them.
@Garrett: Thanks. I should have mentioned the previous sets of talks that have been reported or speculated. Recall in addition that there have been rumors several times of US-Taliban talks that were to be affected by GITMO releases.
@Ben Franklin:
It sounds more like conspiracy theorists going wild. Someone needs to learn about Occam’s Razor and its applications to real life.
@Ben Franklin: @P J Evans: Already debunked.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/newtown-libor-hunger-games-theories.php