Pakistan and China are ready to become ‘guarantors’ of a possible peace deal between the Afghan government and the Afghan Taliban, officials familiar with the development have said. “We are ready to go the extra mile. We are even willing to become guarantors for any peace agreement,” said a senior Pakistani official, who requested not to be named because of sensitivity of the issue. The official said Pakistan has been facilitating Afghan led and Afghan owned peace talks. “But if talks make progress and all sides agree, then Pakistan has no problem in playing its role beyond that of a facilitator,” he said.Pakistan recently hosted the first-ever direct talks between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives at the popular tourist resort of Murree as part of its efforts to put an end to over a decade-old conflict in the war-torn country. Senior officials from Pakistan, China and the United States also attended the closed-door talks suggesting that the Murree process had the backing of all major international players.Much hangs on the outcome of these talks, and if successful they could go a long way towards bringing peace and stability to the region, and Afghanistan specifically, after decades of war. Without going into specifics, Pakistan has said that it is willing to “go the extra mile” in its role as facilitator — but these are negotiations which have as much chance of failure as they do success, and there remains a considerable trust deficit between Pakistan and Afghanistan that is not going to disappear overnight.There are factions certainly within Afghanistan and quite possibly in Pakistan as well that have no investment in success, indeed quite the opposite and would work hard to derail any peace process. India cannot be trusted to play a neutral hand, and it already has a very considerable stake in Afghanistan, both as a donor nation and as a behind-the-arras influence. The government of President Ashraf Ghani is facing severe criticism internally for its rapprochement with Pakistan, and ex-president Hamid Karzai hovers in the wings. The Afghan Taliban themselves are far from united, and it must be hoped that whoever from the Taliban side the governments of Pakistan and China are talking to, represent a significant proportion of those Taliban groups that are still fighting the Afghan government.
pk.shafaqna.com
