Afghanistan Times
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Maulvi Abdul Wahid Tayyebi, High Peace Council head of Badakhshan chapter, said Monday that local Taliban were eager to join peace process but foreign fighters didn’t allow them to do so. According to him over 175 militants joined Afghan-led peace process over the past year. The group of these militants laid down their arms in Yamgan, Jurm, Tagab, Warduj, Yaftal-e-Bala, and Durayom districts of Badakhshan and joined the reconciliation process. Tayyebi talks of those militants who renounced violence in such a time when recently fierce clashes between Afghan security forces and the Taliban left scores of troops killed. It’s really dismaying that so far the government has not launched any probe into the allegations of the deadliest “collusion”, which inflicted a heavy damage in men and material on Afghan security forces. Last week, the acting governor of Badakhshan province Shah Wali Adib said that more than 250 insurgents and around 700 foreign terrorists were active in the province. However, the matter is why foreigners should outnumber the local militants? Adib alleged the foreign fighters were primarily involved in the brutal killing and beheading of Afghan soldiers. Why this northern province is becoming a safe hideout for foreign terrorists? And why they are so much powerful to dictate local fighters not to renounce violence? Or these statements are a cover-up attempt where the government officials want to hide their failures. Moreover, President Ashraf Ghani visited Badakhshan to know what actually happened there. However, the nation doesn’t know about any probe into the incident. Why there shouldn’t be any investigation? Why foreigner terrorists should be allowed to behead Afghans in front of other Afghans (Taliban). This nation, in its history, has never seen and heard about such a shameless act. The truth is until these foreign terrorists have local support they wouldn’t be able to live on this soil even for a single day let alone dictating Afghan Taliban to do this and that. The truth is the High Peace Council (HPC) has remained ineffective and unsuccessful in achieving major breakthroughs in peace talks with the Taliban. What the HPC can do is to convene press conferences, seminars and ulema’s gathering. Even some of the HPC office bearers have felt this weakness and acknowledged in front of media that this national peace body is useless. Though, the government has got a promising opportunity as al-Qaeda is no more fighting in the mountains and plains of Afghanistan. There are serious rifts between the Taliban and the ISIS (Daesh). The goals of the two are totally different and opposing. The one considers itself just a national level resistance movement while the second one is an international terror outfit with international political designs. The one is powerful in terms of resources while another one is hanging by a thread. Moreover, when Iran and Pakistan have also shown their readiness to support Afghanistan in its fight against terror, the government is in a much good position to reach out to the Taliban, convince them on peace talks. But again there comes the question of how to reach out to them? How to isolate Afghan Taliban from the foreigner ones?
