HPC Reacts to Karzai’s Secret Taliban Meetings

KABUL: (MEP) – In response to a recent report by The New York Times exposing recent secret meetings between President Hamid Karzai’s circle and the Taliban, the High Peace Council (HPC), the body officially charged with managing the peace process, has said it had no knowledge of the talks.

According to the The New York Times, Aimal Faizi, Karzai’s spokesman, confirmed that the President has met secretly with the Taliban to discuss possible reconciliation in recent months. He claimed the talks had been positive and the most serious step in contacts with the Taliban since the war began in 2001.

The news is likely to only further aggravate tensions between Kabul and Washington, which have reached an all-time at the start of the New Year. Stalled negotiations over a Kabul-Washington security pact and butting heads over prisoner releases and civilian casualties have been the flash points of conflict between the two governments, but as the secret meetings suggest, much more has been going on beneath the surface.

Faizi said the Taliban have been pleased with the stance President Karzai has taken on the Kabul-Washington Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), indicating Karzai is perhaps more concerned about narrowing the gap with the Taliban than keep the one between him and Washington from opening up more.

Some have suggested Karzai is looking to intentionally derail the BSA along with future relations with the U.S. and its allies in order to build goodwill with the Taliban. If true, it would be a pandering ploy that could either lead to national reconciliation or play into a Taliban plot to weaken the central government as foreign troops withdraw.

But what Karzai’s motives and tactics remain somewhat of a mystery, even to people supposedly inside the inner circle of peace negotiations. The HPC, the only body intended to conduct talks with the Taliban, has said it was completely unaware of the secret talks between Karzai and militant leaders.

“The High Peace Council had honestly no idea about the secret talks between President Karzai and the Taliban in another country,” HPC spokesman Muhammad Ismael Qasimyar said.

According to The New York Times, the Taliban reached out to Karzai just before the Loya Jirga convened in November and approved the BSA for signing. Since then, correspondence has been intermittent, though representatives of either side were said to have met in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“Talks and the leadership of the peace and reconciliation process is the responsibility of the High Peace Council,” Qasimyar asserted.

The New York Times’ sources inside the Afghan government have indicated contact between Karzai and the Taliban has slowed recently. While adding to fears that Karzai may have been duped into alienating himself from his Western allies, a turn for the worst in the secret talks would fail to make clear where the HPC fits in, whether or not it will have a say in the peace process whatsoever.