Kai Eide, the UN's special representative to Afghanistan until earlier this month, has attacked Pakistan for having arrested prominent Taliban leaders who were taking part in back-channel peace talks.
Eide, a Norwegian, confirmed for the first time since leaving office that he had held what seemed to him to be promising discussions with senior Taliban representatives, but that channels of communication had shut down after the arrests.
These arrests had a "negative effect" on prospects for continuing the political process, he told the BBC World Service. The talks had taken place with at least the tacit assent of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, Eide believed. "I find it unthinkable that such contact would take place without his knowledge," he said.
Eide was tasked with bringing impetus to peace efforts in Afghanistan two years ago when relations between Kabul and the international community were in crisis. He left his post 10 days ago.
The US is sceptical about negotiations, though Britain wants greater efforts to talk to the Taliban about cutting ties with al-Qaida and ending a conflict which has cost more than 270 British lives and is being intensified by Kabul's inefficiency and corruption.
"Of course I met Taliban leaders during the time I was in Afghanistan," Eide said. "Anything else would have been unthinkable." He said that the first contacts were made last spring, with a lull until after the August 2009 election. But they ended a few weeks ago when US and Pakistani intelligence arrested Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the number two in the Taliban command, in Karachi. Up to 14 others were also detained.
Baradar's seizure was reported as a breakthrough in co-operation between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, but a key figure in back-channel talks involving Saudi Arabia described his arrest as "a huge blow" to the fledgling peace initiative.
Eide was highly critical of Pakistan and questioned its motives. "If your question had been, 'do I believe that Pakistan plays the role it should in promoting a political dialogue that is so necessary for ending the conflict in Afghanistan?' – then my answer would be no, the Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played. They must have known about this; I don't believe that these people were arrested by coincidence. They must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing; and you see the result today."
Eide said he believed Pakistan wanted to stop the UN and Afghan talks with the Taliban to retain control of the process.
The diplomat also took issue with senior US military and political officials, including General David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, who argue that peace talks are premature and that the Taliban will only begin to negotiate in good faith once they have felt the full force of the US-led military surge.
"I believe, on the contrary, that talks are long overdue, and had we really engaged in them some time ago then we could have progressed further than we have today," Eide said in the BBC interview.
"I think I have experienced, over 35 years of engagement in international affairs, that we very often misjudge our opponents, or the other side. We did that in the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s. We did it in the 1990s. And we do it again, I believe; and that, perhaps if we had seen it from the point of view of the Taliban, maybe we would have come to a different conclusion than the one we've come to today. I believe that what has happened over the last few weeks may well have hardened the Taliban, rather than moved them closer to the table."
Eide had previously argued that talks with the Taliban were the best way to end the eight-year-old war and expressed concern that Barack Obama's decision to send 30,000 to 35,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan is coming without a concurrent political surge.
Courtesy: guardian.co.uk
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