Head of Afghanistan delegation and Deputy Chairman of High Peace Council, Hajji Din Mohammad, Russian Foreign ... Read More

Russia- and the Taliban- scored PR victories with Friday’s meeting in Moscow on the future of Afghanistan, which brought the Taliban to another international negotiating table. For India, the event served to bring out from the closet a significant shift in its policy vis a vis the Taliban, for the first time agreeing to share a room with them, something that was anathema until recently.

Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Zamir Kabulov is expected to make a statement on the meeting on Monday. After the meeting, Sergei Lavrov , Russia’s foreign minister said, “Afghanistan’s problems can only be settled politically, through the attainment of national accord and with the involvement of all parties to the conflict. We hope that responsible politicians will not be guided by personal or group considerations but by the interests of the people of Afghanistan.” The last remark is being seen by Indian observers as indicating that Russia would try to resist Pakistan’s machinations. Pakistani representatives at the meeting claimed ownership of this approach, saying the world had recognized what Pakistan had said all along.

The last such meeting by Russia had to be called off at the eleventh hour because the Afghan government had refused to participate. This time Moscow had prepared better, agreeing to open the meeting to even non-government representatives — the High Peace Council, retired Indian officials and a representative from the US embassy in Moscow. Indian and US representatives stayed silent, but later Moscow asked the Indian government to play a more active role next time. Since India’s presence in Moscow was primarily a response to Russia’s insistence, its unclear how India plans to take this ahead.

India has spent many years not only resisting Taliban but excoriating anyone who differentiated between “good and bad” Taliban. Yet as the ground has shifted, opening the prospect for US-Taliban negotiations and Taliban-Afghan negotiations in future, India would have been foolish to stick to its old stand. In the past 17 years that India has ramped up its presence in Afghanistan, sections of the Indian establishment have increased connections with Afghans across the political spectrum, quietly. As a negotiated solution to Afghanistan becomes more likely, India doesn’t want to be the only power outside the room when that happens.

The importance of the Moscow Format meeting was mainly in its occurrence, and broad-based acknowledgment of the need for a political solution in Afghanistan to bring 17 years of fighting to an end. Although Russia said there would be another iteration no specific dates were announced. In fact, the Afghan government, in a post-meeting statement, attempted to distance itself from the Moscow Format, saying, the High Peace Council was participating “in its own capacity as a national but non-government institution.” The Afghan statement stressed this was “not a follow-up of the previous meetings (Moscow Format) held among sovereign states, as in today’s meeting the Taliban have also been invited.”

Sources said even the Taliban were clear that for them the US-Taliban talks held primacy, and that they were the core of the negotiations. At the meeting, the Taliban representatives, led by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai stuck to their demands that foreign troops should leave Afghanistan first. That was interpreted by everyone in the room as the maximalist position by the Taliban that has already been stated. However, Taliban and US representatives, led by Zalmay Khalilzad have been meeting in Qatar and other capitals to take the direction forward. Khalilzad is currently on a tour of the region to take the next steps in the Taliban talks.

In a press conference later, Stanikzai was quoted by Tolo News as saying, “When they (Americans) give an international guarantee for the withdrawal of their forces, then it is possible to talk to the Afghan side also. But in Afghanistan with those political parties who have influence over the people of Afghanistan, not this present government. Because the present government does not have the support of the people in Afghanistan.”

