KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai is rolling out his program to lure Taliban and other insurgent fighters off the battlefield, addressing a three-day conference starting Wednesday aimed at building a national consensus on how to end the nearly nine-year war.
About 1,600 Afghans will convene in a giant tent at Kabul Polytechnic University to discuss how to reconcile with the fighters, even as the U.S. rushes in more troops to ramp up the war. Lawmakers, provincial council members, tribal and religious leaders and representatives of civil society will participate.
Notably absent from the peace jirga — “jirga” means “large assembly” in Pashto — will be official representatives of the Taliban, although some of the delegates may be insurgent sympathizers.
The Taliban have dismissed the jirga as a “phony reconciliation process” and insist they will not negotiate until all foreign troops leave the country. Security has been stepped up in Kabul in case the Taliban launches attacks in the capital to disrupt the conference.
Still, Karzai is hoping the jirga will bolster him politically by endorsing his strategy of offering incentives to individual Taliban fighters and reaching out to the insurgent leadership, despite skepticism in Washington that the time is right for an overture to militant leaders.
The Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Program would be supported by a $160 million trust fund financed by the U.S., Japan, Britain and others.
To take advantage of the program, insurgents must renounce violence, respect the Afghan constitution and sever ties with al-Qaida or other terrorist networks, according to the draft obtained by the Associated Press.
Some members of Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities fear Karzai may be too eager to sell out their interests in hopes of cutting a deal with the Taliban, who, like him, are Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group.
About 20 percent of the delegates will be women, a sector that suffered under Taliban rule and would have much to lose in a settlement that gives the insurgents a prominent political role in Afghan society.
“I have to tell you that this program with Karzai sounds like kind of a deal with the Taliban,” said Fauzia Khofi, an ethnic Tajik lawmaker who survived an assassination attempt last March in her northern province of Badakhshan.
“Karzai perhaps wants the reintegration money just to help the Pashtuns in the south,” she said. “For the peace process, they need to discuss with the other factions who fought against the Taliban,” including ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Khofi will attend the jirga.
Even among southern Pashtuns, where skepticism of the government and support for the militants run deep, there are doubts whether significant numbers of Taliban fighters will accept the deal, preferring instead to hold out until foreign troops are gone. President Barack Obama has pledged to begin pulling out U.S. troops in July 2011.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
