WITH the Taliban making territorial advances and bombing the capital every week, it may seem the least likely moment to be talking about an Afghan peace deal. But Agha Jan Motasim, a former Taliban minister, insists that now is the time.
Once the Taliban’s finance minister and chief auditor, and a close associate of the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Muhammad Omar, Mr. Motasim has positioned himself as a back-channel negotiator between the insurgents and the Afghan government for the last eight years. He lives in hiding most of the time, shuttling through multiple cities of the Persian Gulf, Turkey and Afghanistan, holding meetings in well-guarded government guesthouses.
In a rare four-hour interview over dinner, he spoke of how the changing circumstances in Afghanistan and new pressures on the Taliban meant that demands for peace were growing inside the movement. He spoke on the condition that the interview’s location not be disclosed because of security concerns and the political implications of his work.
Mr. Motasim, whose full name is Sayed Abdul Wasi Motasim, is well known in intelligence and diplomatic circles — not least because he was featured until three years ago on the United Nations Security Council sanctions list and on the most-wanted list of the United States.
Mr. Motasim has been in the position of publicly saying the Taliban were ready to talk peace before, only to be proved wrong. That, and the Taliban’s public denunciation of him several years ago, have fueled questions about how tied in to the insurgency’s inner circle he remains.
But with the peace process stuck for the last two years, Mr. Motasim has picked up the baton again.
He insists that prospects for talks are growing: He says the Taliban leadership council recently met in the Pakistani border town of Quetta and agreed to proceed with peace negotiations. (Taliban figures who were reached for comment on Mr. Motasim’s claim were split on whether the final verdict of the meeting was to pursue talks, with some saying the matter had not been resolved.)
Afterward, he said, several members of the Taliban leadership council asked him to restart his negotiations with the Afghan government
Mr. Motasim is one of very few people in the world who might legitimately serve as such a go-between. But his personal experiences speak to the perils of trying to negotiate peace. He walks with a limp after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt in 2010, his family lives in exile, and he leads a secret life.
Mr. Motasim, 45, comes from the Taliban heartland of Kandahar Province and bears the title “sayed,” which denotes that his family is descended from the Prophet Muhammad. A religious student, he joined the mujahedeen for a year at the end of the war against the Soviet Union and then joined the Taliban when it formed in 1994 in Kandahar.
He was close to Mullah Omar when he was in power — eating meals with him and overseeing his security — but says he never saw him after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. The Taliban leadership regrouped in Quetta in Pakistan, but he said they never met with Mullah Omar. Only two personal messengers ever had direct access to the leader, and even close relatives did not see him, he said.
Mr. Motasim was at the heart of the movement when it organized to fight an insurgency against the American military presence in Afghanistan and the government it supported. He said an early attempt to seek reconciliation through the governor of Kandahar was rejected, so the Taliban had no other choice but to fight.
He led the financial committee and later the political committee of the Taliban movement and traveled frequently to Saudi Arabia on fund-raising tours. He became known to the Saudi authorities, and when President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan asked the Saudi king to mediate peace with the Taliban, the Saudis enlisted Mr. Motasim’s help.
HE began back-channel negotiations as head of the Taliban’s political committee, and says he twice met with a brother of Mr. Karzai’s, in 2008 and 2009. The two successfully worked on confidence-building measures that focused on having the Taliban end attacks on schools and government officials and on having the government work on releasing Taliban prisoners and removing Taliban leaders from the sanctions list, Afghan officials and Western diplomats confirm.
Then in August 2010, as he was backing his car through the gate at his home in Karachi, Pakistan, a gunman opened fire on him. As Mr. Motasim dived out of the car, the gunman pumped 12 bullets from a pistol into his head, stomach and legs. It left him in a hospital unable to speak for months and ended the Saudi-led peace initiative.
“I saw the danger, and people used to warn me about the possible danger,” he recalled. “But I told them that for the sake of my country and my people, I will accept this danger so we can bring our people peace and stability.”
Mr. Motasim left Pakistan with his family for medical treatment in Turkey and returned to peacemaking.
He was removed from the United Nations’ sanctions list, as well as the United States’ wanted-terrorist list in 2013. A year later he gathered 22 Taliban ministers and leaders in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, to meet with senior Afghan officials and members of the Afghan High Peace Council — proof, he says, of the level of support for peace. “We had lots of discussions and we had achieved a lot toward peace,” he said.
But he had made enemies as well. The Taliban denounced him and declared he was no longer a representative of the movement. His deputy at the talks, Abdul Raqib Takhari, a former Taliban minister for refugees, was killed when he returned to his home in Peshawar, Pakistan. Two months later, Mr. Motasim was detained by the police in Dubai for 22 days. He was freed only after the Afghan government lobbied for his release.
He declines to name the source of his trials, but he points out that he had to escape Pakistan. He says the way forward is for the Taliban and the Afghan government to hold direct talks and to work out foreign relations afterward.
“It is a long process,” he said.
“For this we must have lots of committees, gatherings of tribal elders, of the Taliban themselves, lots of research is needed, and then we will go step by step forward.”
IN person, Mr. Motasim exudes a diplomatic patience, and the diligent hospitality that is the hallmark of influential Afghans. He answered hours of questions calmly and at length, personally serving his guests kebabs and rice and handing out gifts at the end.
He seemed to speak at least partly for himself when he said that the Taliban were ready to share in the political life of Afghanistan and want to return home with dignity.
He said he did not receive instructions directly from the new Taliban leader, Mullah Haibatullah, but he said he understood the instructions came with his sanction.
“Indirectly it might be coming from his side,” he said. “In the past I was not asked or approached to struggle for peace, but now the desire has increased.”
He says that despite their gains on the battlefield, the Taliban are under pressure and are feeling their losses — including Mullah Omar, whose death was announced last year, and his successor Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who was killed in an American drone strike in the Taliban’s longtime haven in Pakistan in May.
“They say that if they had chosen to make peace, their leaders would be alive,” Mr. Motasim said.
He said that the most important shift in favor of peace was the main American troop withdrawal after 2014. The Taliban could not consider peace talks when tens of thousands of foreign troops were conducting offensive operations in Afghanistan, but the current arrangement for many fewer troops serving under a restrained security agreement would be more acceptable to the Taliban generally, he said.
“If there is a genuine effort toward peace,” he said, “then all Afghans would choose to make peace.”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/world/asia/taliban-agha-jan-motasim.html?ref=asia&_r=0
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