Afghan Peace Efforts Scuttled by Ghani Government, Taliban Says
(Bloomberg) -- The leader of the Taliban said peace efforts are running into “diplomatic obstructions” by President Ashraf Ghani's administration, sidelined in recent talks between prominent Afghan figures and the militant group.
The Taliban “shall pay no heed to such futile efforts” to seek prominence, Hibatullah Akhundzada said in his annual Eid-ul-Fitr statement Saturday. He made the comments two days after a group including Afghanistan's former president Hamid Karzai met with the Taliban's deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and a delegation of 13 members in Moscow to try to end war in the country.
Those talks ended without palpable movement toward a Taliban cease-fire in a replay of a February meeting in the Russian capital. Several rounds of marathon talks in Doha in recent months brokered by U.S. Special Envoy on Afghan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad also failed to produce results.
Taliban leaders resisted international calls for a cease-fire during the three-day Eid celebration.
The group has also rebuffed efforts by Ghani to engage in talks and called his rule illegitimate.
Akhundzada reiterated demands for a U.S. military withdrawal as a condition of a cease-fire and direct talks with Ghani.
“No one should expect us to pour cold water on the heated battlefronts of Jihad or forget our forty-year sacrifices before reaching our objectives,” he said.
Afghan politicians are concerned that the Taliban's participation in government could open the way for the return of a regime that had banned women from education and punished men for shaving beards from 1996-2001. Akhundzada rejected the power monopoly claim, saying that all Afghans will have a role in the government.
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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