Saturday January 27, 2018
Kabul (BNA) Peace is a highly desire of Afghanistan people. Reaching to lasting peace and stability in the country is related to efforts of international community and regional countries that supporting Afghan-led peace process. Secretary of High Peace Council’s secretariat Dr. Aminuddin Muzafari by pointing to principal goals of Afghanistan government and High Peace Council (HPC) said, “Undoubtedly the main goal of the government and HPC is to pave the way for dialogue and talks between the government and armed opponents and the HPC’s policy is to support any initiatives that facilitate opportunity for intra-Afghani dialogue and peace process. First, it is necessary to create national consensus for the peace as we have repeatedly asked the government to create regional and international consensus in connection with peace process and fortunately all the three consensuses have been created.”
“In national consensus, peace is undoubtedly a need. Thus, talks and negotiations are held between Afghans, but facilitation is paved by the international community and regional countries. Each country that works in this regard is considered as a positive step and we welcome it. It is good that we hold Kabul Process meeting that is attended by representatives of the international community and regional countries,” Muzafari said. In connection with gap in Taliban and lack of one leadership in the group, Muzafari said, “Undoubtedly lack of one leadership in Taliban has two dimensions. Firstly, lack of one leadership in Taliban group has paved the way for other members of the group to join the peace process. From one side that the issue provides opportunity, it creates challenges. In the past, there was only one address for talks with Taliban, but now talks should be held with other groups of the Taliban as there are few addresses of the group.”
He added that it was the responsibility of HPC to make use of opportunities provided for peace despite of all problems and challenges.
Answering a question ‘whether Taliban believe on peace or not’, secretary of the HPC secretariat said, “Peace has both internal and external factors.
In internal factor, after withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, armed opponents hoped that they could overthrow Afghanistan government through military force; therefore, they rejected the voice of peace raised by Afghanistan government.” He added that armed opponents could not succeed through military move as the situation changed and now they had no achievement in this regard, so they should prefer peace talks rather than war and violence.
“The external factor of peace is that Taliban members are all mercenaries of a number of neighboring countries. Fortunately, as a result of foreign policy of Afghanistan government and based on pressures of HPC, today supporters of Taliban are now under increasing pressures of the international community in particular the US. Increasing pressures on supporters of Taliban and other terrorist groups has made them declare that suicide attack and killing of innocent people are illegal and rejected violence. I hope the external factor will stop supporting Taliban group so they accept and join peace process,” Muzafari said. Responding a question that ‘why role of women is ignored in peace talks and what is the reason?’, Dr. Aminuddin Muzafari said, “For the past six months, HPC has started with a new strategy and combination. Based on the strategy, role of women has increased in HPC and peace talks as there were only nine women members in HPC, while currently there are 12 women and all are members of the council.”
He added that HPC has created provincial peace committees and efforts were underway to increase women from two to five women for membership of each provincial committee as women were half part of our society. “In new strategy of HPC and inconsideration to this principle, we are further working on national consensus as we have recently invited 700 ulamas to Kabul where all of them said that ongoing war in the country is illegal and asked for peace,” he said, adding that during the past two weeks, HPC has invited representatives of civil society and nearly 200 youth who all said that the people of Afghanistan want peace. He further said that HPC was making effort to hold an International Conference of world ulamas in Kabul to have visions and consensus of the world ulamas in connection with destiny of war in Afghanistan, adding that he hoped that HPC would succeed to finally hold intra-Afghani talks.
Lailuma Noori
