[NYTr] Taliban sets out demands to Afghan president

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Guardian - Oct 15, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2191310,00.html

Taliban sets out demands to Afghan president

* Contact raises hopes for eventual end to conflict
* Militants want control of southern provinces

by Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Sami Yousafzai in Peshawar
 
Senior Taliban commanders in Helmand province have sent a list of
demands to the Karzai government as part of tentative back-channel
talks to bring a peaceful end to the conflict.

The militant leaders - who include a key aide to Taliban leader Mullah
Muhammad Omar - want control of 10 southern provinces, a timetable for
withdrawal of foreign troops, and the release of all Taliban prisoners
within six months. The demands were passed through a former Taliban
foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, and the former Taliban
ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.

The demands are unlikely to be taken seriously. However, British and
Afghan officials supporting such contacts consider them a sign that a
negotiated settlement may be possible with at least some insurgent
commanders. But officials on all sides stress that the contacts are in
their infancy and are unlikely to trigger an early end to the violence
that has claimed more than 5,000 lives this year.

A senior diplomatic source in Kabul confirmed that Mr Muttawakil and Mr
Zaeef, who was released from Guantánamo Bay in 2004, were part of a
wide group of intermediaries between the government and Taliban
commanders. "There are many groups involved. It's a very wide range,"
he said.

The contacts are a tacit recognition from the coalition and the Taliban
that, in the short term at least, neither side is capable of winning
the Afghan war.

They face stiff hurdles, some in Kabul. The idea of negotiations is
anathema to ethnic Tajiks who fought the Pashtun-dominated Taliban in
the late 1990s. "There is controversy in the non-Pashtun community
about something horrible coming in through the back door," said the
diplomatic source.

President Hamid Karzai also faces a more practical problem of which
phone number to call. Analysts describe the Taliban as a network of
loosely linked groups divided by region, tribe and criminal
affiliation. Motivations vary enormously - some are involved in the
lucrative heroin trade or petty crime, while some are driven by
nationalist sentiment or a hardline Islamist ideology. "It's a shifting
group of alliances and networks. They have to adapt constantly to
survive," said the diplomatic source.

All are united behind Mullah Omar, the undisputed Taliban leader. The
one-eyed cleric heads a 30-member shura - leadership council - and a
smaller 10-member military council. Both bodies are believed to operate
out of the lawless borderlands in neighbouring Pakistan, which provide
a crucial sanctuary.

One node centres on Quetta in western Pakistan. Black-turbaned fighters
openly roamed the streets until a Pakistan government clampdown earlier
this year. However, the Taliban's operations hub is thought to be
Kuchlak, a small town 12 miles north of the city.

The other node is 250 miles to the north-east in North Waziristan,
where Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of a famous jihadi commander,
controls military operations that span Pakistani, Afghan and al-Qaida
fighters.

Waziristan is considered a major training hub and the source of many of
the suicide bombers who have struck across Pakistan and Afghanistan
this year.

Nato and Taliban officials said a turning point in talks came after the
Korean hostage crisis this summer in which two aid workers were killed
but 21 were freed unharmed.

After that, a Nato official said, "both sides had faith that talking
could actually work".

Mullah Omar has repeatedly spurned Mr Karzai's advances. Six years
after September 11, the fugitive leader remains more of an enigma than
Osama bin Laden. He rarely makes public statements. When he does it is
through Mullah Brader, a commander in Helmand with whom he has marriage
ties.

One Taliban source said that Mullah Brader supported the recent list of
demands sent to the Karzai government.

Mullah Omar's lieutenants are under immense pressure. Nato and
Pakistani military actions have taken out a slew of mid-level
commanders and three major figures this year. The ruthless battlefield
commander Mullah Dadullah was killed in a special forces raid; Mullah
Akhtar Usmani was killed after crossing over from Pakistan; and Mullah
Obaidullah was arrested in Quetta. Due to these and other losses the
Quetta shura has been unable to meet for the past two and a half
months, said the diplomatic source in Kabul.

Taliban officials admit they are worried about losing their sanctuary
in Waziristan. Major clashes with the Pakistan army in the past eight
days have left 200 militants and 50 government soldiers dead, according
to army figures.

And for some, talks of any sort give the Taliban an unwarranted
legitimacy. One official in Kabul, who declined to be named, was
enraged by the defence minister, Des Browne, comparing the Taliban to
Hamas. "It's utter nonsense. You can't compare a coherent political
organisation like Hamas with a non-unified movement with little
grassroots support."