KABUL – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said international meetings next month to lay the groundwork for a possible resumption of peace talks with the Taliban had to seek an approach to the fractured insurgent movement that ensured a rejection of terrorism.
Officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States are due to meet in Islamabad on Jan 11 to try to revive a peace process that stalled in July when the news came out that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had died two years earlier.
“It is obvious that there are groups of Taliban, not a unified movement,” Ghani told a news conference on Thursday. “The fundamental issue here is the choice: choose peace or terrorism,” he said. “There will be no tolerance for terrorism.”
January’s meeting will be followed by another encounter in Kabul, with Afghanistan initially represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai.
The United States and China have both been pressing hard for a resumption of talks with the Taliban but mutual suspicions between Kabul and Islamabad, as well as the factional fighting within the Taliban, have held up the process.
Afghanistan has long said Pakistan is harbouring Taliban leaders and sponsoring the insurgency as a means of exerting control over Kabul, a charge that Pakistan rejects, saying it too is a victim of terrorism.
For its part, the main faction of the Taliban has rejected peace talks as long as foreign troops in NATO’s training and assistance mission remain in Afghanistan.
Despite its leadership disputes, the movement has made big advances this year, inflicting heavy casualties on Afghan forces fighting largely on their own since the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops last year.
As well as the brief capture of the northern city of Kunduz in September, the insurgent movement has also threatened to take the volatile southern province of Helmand after overrunning several district centres.http://nation.com.pk/national/01-Jan-2016/end-to-terror-a-condition-for-peace-talks-says-ghani
Conflicting dates announced for quadrilateral Afghan talks: Report in Dawn, Jan 1, 2016
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Afghanistan announced on Thursday conflicting dates for holding the inaugural round of quadrilateral dialogue, which also involves the United States and China, on resumption of the Afghan reconciliation process.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaking at a press conference in Kabul, said the meeting would be held in Islamabad on Jan 11.
Defence Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif, meanwhile, in a policy statement in the Senate on the visit of Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif to Kabul, said Islamabad would host the four-nation talks on Jan 16.
In his meetings with President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah during the weekend trip, Gen Sharif had discussed the roadmap for restarting the reconciliation process between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
The meeting of the coordination committee of the newly formed quadrilateral mechanism would be held at the level of senior officials. Afghanistan has announced that its delegation would be led by its deputy foreign minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai. Pakistan is expected to be represented at the meeting by the foreign secretary.
The Foreign Office spokesman had earlier at the weekly briefing said: “Consultations are under way to host the first meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Committee in Islamabad in the second week of January. Exact date is being worked out in consultation with Afghanistan, China and the US. The level, composition and agenda of the meeting are also being worked out through consultations.”
The four-nation process was established earlier this month on the sidelines of Heart of Asia Conference when Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and China agreed on devising a mechanism under which they could work together for the resumption of reconciliation process.
Speaking in the Senate, the defence minister said the quadrilateral meeting would decide about the responsibilities and roles of the four stakeholders in the process that would be led by the Afghans with the other three playing the role of facilitators.
Mr Asif told legislators that clergy would be asked to issue a religious decree (fatwa) endorsing the peace process.
He did not specify, which clerics would be asked for the decree, but noted that such edicts got lot of importance in Afghanistan.
The minister said that a successful reconciliation process was the best bet against the militant Islamic State (IS) group (also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh) that was expanding its footprints in Afghanistan. IS, he said, now had presence in five Afghan provinces.
He said Pakistan would use all means at its disposal to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. www.dawn.com
Fate of Afghan refugees still unclear: by Maqbool Malik in The Nation, Jan 1, 2016
Over a million Afghan refugees in Pakistan are on verge of facing evictions, police extortion and hunger after 31 December 2015 because of confusion about their status and crises in Syria.
“Because of uncertainty over Pakistan government’s decision about extension in the status of registered Afghan refugees and because of compelling financial constraints due to crisis in Syria the United Nations High Commission (UNHCR) is limiting its operation in Pakistan”, UNHCR spokesperson Ms. Dunya Aslam Khan told The Nation on Monday.
Pakistan had extended refugee status of over a million Afghans for six months in June to 31 December, 2015 after the government unveiled a new policy on counter terrorism and launched a nationwide National Action Plan (NAP) to check and plug the loopholes including documentation of all the Afghan nationals living across the country.
Under the new policy refugee status allows Afghans to get a government ID card that they use for everyday activities like banking or registering for school.
Even though Pakistan government is carefully following policy of voluntary repatriation many fear repeat of harassment of Afghans in case of any delay in government’s decision about extension of refugee status. One of the factors that created gulf between Islamabad and Kabul this year was mistreatment of Afghans living in Pakistan. The Afghan government openly accused Pakistan government for mishandling the repatriation issue. More than 60,000 Afghans had repatriated to Afghanistan in 2015.
“We fear harassment of Afghan refugees will restart in Pakistan in case of delay in revalidation of Proof of Registration of refugees by National Database and registration Authority (NDRA) of Pakistan”, Dunya Aslam said amid increased concerns over international financial constraints to tackle refugees problem following the situation in Syria. UNHCR spokesperson in Pakistan said “Because of international financial constraints we are accordingly limiting of operations with staff cuts”.
On the other hand, government sources while playing down gravity of the situation claimed that government has in principle agreed to extend refugee status of registered Afghans in Pakistan for next two years up to 31 December 2017 and only the Cabinet approval is awaited.
Pakistan has been hosting Afghan refugees dating back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan three decades ago and decided to encourage accelerated voluntary repatriation of Afghans largely for security reasons and economic implications for its population.
There had been no proper documentation of Afghans living in the country since their arrival in 1979 and according to the UNHCR data there are 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan. They were registered for the first time in 2005 when Pakistan government carried out a census in March 2005 to assess number of Afghans which revealed more than three million Afghan nationals living across the country. A study done by Islamabad based think- tank Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) suggests 80 percent of the refugee influx occurred between 1979 and 1985. The door-to-door data collection put the total number of Afghan refugees in the country at three million and over the years, 1.5 million refugees have repatriated to their country.
They were soon issued the Proof of Registration (POR) cards by Nadra. Under the process the family is given a unique number. In case of married men with children under the age of five, the children’s names are then printed at the back of the card. As soon as the children reach the age of five, they have their own POR cards.
Explaining the process, public information officer at the UNHCR Duniya Aslam Khan said that the first POR cards were issued to the refugees in 2006 for a period of three years with the expectation that the situation would improve in Afghanistan during that period.
On its part the then government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai tried to attract Afghan refugees living in Pakistan by offering several incentives but the plan did not work. In an effort to resolve some of the shelter related problems, in 2005, the Afghan government began an ambitious land distribution to over 300,000 returnees.
Some 13,000 plots of land were distributed, mostly in the provinces of Farah, Logar, Faryab and Parwan. In provinces where government land is not available for distribution, eligible returnees are to be provided land in a neighboring province that can absorb them. Kabul has said priority would be given to returnees who are disabled or widowed, and to families lacking a breadwinner.
But the Pakistan government had to give another three-year extension in 2009 after the situation in the country (Afghanistan) further worsened. The government of Pakistan recently extended the refugees’ stay in the country till December 2015.
At the same time, she pointed out; there was no set time for the refugees to return to their homeland. “The entire process of refugees returning to their homes is a voluntary one. Pakistan still shares a porous border with Afghanistan and even if we expect them to go back, the condition on ground has not improved, especially in the east and south of Afghanistan, for the refugees to return to their homes,” she added.
She rejected the notions that registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan were involved in any criminal activity. “But we cannot give guarantees about the unregistered Afghans living Pakistan”, Ms. Khan added.
Another senior UN official said that Pakistan government needs to strongly manage its migration policy and control along the Pak- Afghan border to stop illegal border crossings.
On the other hand, the Interior Ministry responsible to implement NAP has found out equal number of Afghan nationals living illegally in Pakistan through fake national identity cards detected by NADRA largely in Balochistan, FATA and parts of KPK.
“We have so far cancelled hundred and thousands of such cards, and process of verification of other such cards acquired by Afghan migrants through illegal means continue “, a senior government official said requesting not to be named.
The official said that despite pressure from Afghan government and some of the parliamentary parties’ government is steadfast and continuing with the re-verification process of identity documents of such Afghans.http://nation.com.pk/national/01-Jan-2016/fate-of-afghan-refugees-still-unclear
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