Some say the ongoing fighting is a bid by Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour to consolidate his position ahead of four-way talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USA and China slated for next week, a precursor to a revived peace dialogue between Kabul and the insurgents.
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Sartaj Aziz said Pakistan valued its brotherly and neighbourly relations with Afghanistan.
Adviser to Pakistan Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz on Monday opened a meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Committee (QCC) in Islamabad aimed at reviving the Afghan peace process.
Javid Faisal, deputy spokesman for Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, said Pakistan’s list will include Taliban members who are and are not willing to participate in talks with Kabul on ending the 15-year war.
Mr. Faisal said Pakistan has agreed to block all funding to the Taliban, including in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan.
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Peace efforts last year stalled after the Taliban announced that their founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had been dead for two years, throwing the militant group into disarray as rival factions fought for supremacy. Travelling to Afghanistan unaccompanied by the country’s powerful ISI intelligence agency, which has always been considered the force behind the Taliban, was a signal, said Gul, that Sharif was centering future policy decisions only at army headquarters.
He said proper sequencing of actions and measures in the process would be significant in paving the way for direct talks with Taliban groups.
As I discussed at the end of 2015, the current groundwork for resuming peace talks comes after an attempt by both Kabul and Islamabad to pick up the pieces of a failed attempt at bilateral rapprochement between their governments last summer.
The Taliban have stepped up their insurgency since the withdrawal of NATO-led combat troops from Afghanistan a year ago, testing government forces that are forced to spread their resources across the country.
Senior officials from the four countries are meeting in Islamabad to launch what they hope will lead to negotiations involving the Taliban, who are fighting to impose their strict brand of Islamist rule and are not expected at Monday’s talks. They have vowed to talk only to the US government, and not the government in the Afghan capital of Kabul, according to the Associated Press.
The discussion focused on undertaking a clear and realistic assessment of the opportunities for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, anticipated obstacles and measures that would help create conducive environment for peace talks with the shared goal of reducing violence and establishing lasting peace in Afghanistan.
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The Taliban say they captured a government compound in the strategic Sangin district over the weekend, claims denied by Afghan officials.
