Afghan envoy says Taliban team met Pak officials this week

Sartaj Aziz unaware of any Afghan Taliban delegation visiting Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Three senior Taliban members travelled to Pakistan this week and held a series of meetings with Pakistani officials in Islamabad, mainly to brief them about the recent talks held in Qatar between the Taliban and Kabul, Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal confirmed.

Zakhilwal said he was aware of the meetings. “We know about these recent meetings but we don’t know what was discussed between the Taliban and Pakistani officials,” he said.

According to a senior Taliban official, the Taliban who were sent to Pakistan were Mulla Salam Hanifi and Mulla Jan Muhammad, both former ministers in the Taliban government, and Maulvi Shahabuddin Dilawar, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

A foreign news agency reported that a senior Pakistani security official confirmed the latest meetings between the Taliban and Pakistani authorities, saying Islamabad was playing its role to ensure peace in neighbouring Afghanistan. Pakistan has repeatedly said it will support any effort aimed at bringing peace in Afghanistan.

“We will keep making efforts to facilitate talks between Kabul and the Taliban, as we did in July 2015, but the world knows who scuttled the peace process at the time and we do not want to discuss those bitter things,” the official was quoted as saying.

Pakistan arranged the first-ever face-to-face talks between Kabul and the Taliban in 2015, but the peace process broke down after the Afghan government announced the death years earlier of the Taliban’s one-eyed founder and leader Mulla Omar. 

In the time since, a leadership struggle within the Taliban’s ranks broke into the open and Mulla Omar’s successor was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan. The latest development came after Taliban and Afghan government officials held new secret talks in Qatar aimed at restarting peace negotiations to end the country’s long war. Pakistan was not involved in the talks and the Taliban said Pakistan was not aware of them until they were over.

Meanwhile, Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said he was not aware if any delegation of the Afghan Taliban had recently come to Pakistan to discuss the peace talks with the government in Kabul.

Speaking to the media, Sartaj Aziz said delegations keep coming and they have come in the past but right now there is no confirmation on the matter.

He said everyone was trying for peace in Afghanistan and if there is consensus on how to take the dialogue forward, the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), the four-nation group working for reconciliation in Afghanistan, could be approached.

When asked if he saw the Afghan Taliban becoming a part of the government in Kabul in future, the adviser said that remains to be seen, adding that a lot of steps will have to be taken before that stage arrives.