Ongoing Standoff Between Afghan Government, Taliban Movement

The second round of the Moscow format consultations on Afghanistan, aimed at securing peace and facilitating the national reconciliation process in the country, was held on Friday in the Russian capital.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 09th November, 2018) The second round of the Moscow format consultations on Afghanistan, aimed at securing peace and facilitating the national reconciliation process in the country, was held on Friday in the Russian capital.

The talks involved the Afghan High Peace Council and, for the first time, the political office of the Taliban in Doha. Representatives from China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the United States were also invited to attend the meeting.

Afghanistan is a country in south-central Asia bordering Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and India. The country has been mired in violent conflict for the past 40 years.

After World War II, Afghanistan remained an underdeveloped country with substantial vestiges of feudalism. The military coup of 1973 abolished the monarchy, and the country was proclaimed a republic. However, the new government virtually toed a pro-monarchist line that culminated in the national-democratic revolution of 1978 and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In 1987, it was renamed the Republic of Afghanistan. The Afghan revolution was met with tough domestic and external resistance. An armed confrontation flared up between the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and other parties and movements opposing it. This power struggle escalated into a civil war.

The situation was aggravated by foreign involvement in the domestic affairs of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union and some other countries supported the government of Afghanistan, with NATO countries, Muslim states and China siding with opposition forces. After the Afghan government's repeated requests, Soviet leadership, fearing that hostilities might spill outside Afghanistan and engulf Central Asian republics, deployed a limited military contingent to Afghanistan in late December 1979. In January 1980, Soviet forces became actively involved in combat operations against opposition forces, mostly supported by Pakistan. On April 14, 1988, the United Nations, assisted by the Soviet Union and the United States, persuaded Afghanistan and Pakistan to sign agreements on resolving the Afghan crisis in Geneva. In February 1989, Soviet forces pulled out of Afghanistan completely. Although the Soviet Union stopped providing military assistance to the Afghan government in January 1992, op

position forces continued to receive such assistance from abroad. Opposition parties took over in Afghanistan in February 1992.

An interim government was established and the Islamic State of Afghanistan was proclaimed. However, the conflict continued without respite, escalating into an armed power struggle between Islamic parties, primarily fundamentalist organizations. This struggle was mostly caused by a striving of former opposition leaders to gain power and divide spheres of influence.

In 1992, graduates of Pakistani Madrasa Muslim religious schools for Pashtun refugees from Afghanistan established the fundamentalist Taliban Islamic movement. Headed by Mullah Mohammad Omar, the movement called for establishing a "truly Islamic" state and confronted the government of Afghanistan.

In early 1995, large units of Taliban forces invaded Afghanistan from Pakistan. They established control over most of the country and proclaimed the creation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan there. Government forces retreated into northern Afghanistan and continued to fight the Taliban, with varying degrees of success.

Pakistan provided all-round assistance, including military and financial support, to the Taliban movement. Television broadcasts and most types of leisure activities were banned on Taliban-controlled territory, and the rights of women and religious minorities were also curtailed.

Staring from 1996, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda terrorist group (banned in Russia) used the territory of Afghanistan as a staging area for attacks against the "infidels." In the late 1990s, Afghanistan virtually turned into a base for international terrorist activity. On September 9, 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of anti-Taliban forces, was assassinated. This murder was followed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Osama bin Laden was accused of masterminding both attacks that caused Western countries to lash out at Afghanistan. In late 2001, units of the anti-terrorist coalition, including a US military contingent and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), launched a military operation in Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban regime. The international coalition's forces were deployed to Afghanistan under UN Security Council Resolution 1368, dated September 12, 2001.

In December 2001, the German city of Bonn hosted a conference of leading Afghan political forces whose representatives established the Afghan Interim Administration headed by Hamid Karzai. Its officials focused on restoring peace in the country and establishing a democratic society. Surviving Taliban units continued to fight the government of Karzai and the forces of the international anti-terrorist coalition. They conducted successful guerrilla warfare in various Afghan provinces.

Taliban militants became firmly entrenched in hard-to-reach mountain areas on the Afghan-Pakistani border, reorganizing their forces and continuing hostilities. The technically superior forces of the international anti-terrorist coalition that expelled Taliban militants from the majority of Afghan regions began to sustain casualties. In December 2009, then US President Barack Obama announced another surge of 30,000 US troops into Afghanistan, failing to obtain the desired results.

The stalled military operation in Afghanistan triggered some disagreements among coalition members.

On December 31, 2014, the US-led NATO coalition completed its combat mission in Afghanistan. On January 1, 2015, NATO launched a new non-military operation involving 12,000 service personnel in the country. These officers and soldiers train and consult personnel for Afghan security forces.

Most ISAF contingents left the country after January 2015, with the Taliban stepping up its terrorist attacks and confronting government forces.

Today, forces of the Taliban movement control about 50 percent of Afghan territory. According to the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (CIGAR), the national government controls 55.5 percent of the country's territory, an all-time low between November 2015 and July 2018. About 65 percent of the Afghan population lives there. The report notes that national security forces of Afghanistan have failed to establish control over additional areas, territories and population segments in the third quarter of 2018. The area of "disputed" territories that are not controlled by any warring party has also increased.

The domestic Afghan conflict spilled out of the country long ago. Neighboring countries view Afghanistan as a potential source of terrorism and as an area for settling issues between major players, namely, Russia and the United States. Russia has always voiced a tough position with regard to the Taliban claiming that it must renounce its terrorist activities. This is a mandatory precondition for any follow-up dialogue and incipient talks with its representatives. Kazakhstan supports Russia, whose position also coincides with the rhetoric of Pakistan, Iran and China to some extent. These countries advocate efforts to launch a dialogue as soon as possible and to resolve the situation around Afghanistan.

NATO and India side with the United States on the Afghan issue � Afghanistan's position is greatly influenced by Washington's decision-making process. In early 2018, US President Donald Trump noted emphatically that there would be no talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Later, Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of the United States Central Command, suggested that Taliban leaders and Kabul sit down at the negotiating table.

The Afghan government has repeatedly noted that it is always ready for a dialogue without any preconditions, but that such talks must be conducted in line with the national constitution.

However, the Taliban do not want to negotiate with the country's "puppet" government and would instead prefer to conduct a direct dialogue with the United States.

Russia has repeatedly tried to broker peace talks between the members of Taliban and Kabul. The last such attempt was made in 2017. At that time, the project failed after Afghan authorities declined the offer because they were confident of US support and because they hoped that they would end the hostilities in their own favor soon. China also made the same futile attempts to launch intra-Afghan dialogue.

At the same time, Russia has continued to try and normalize the situation in Afghanistan. It considers the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan, launched in early 2017, a perfect venue for conducting detailed talks on the Afghan national reconciliation issue and for launching a direct dialogue between the national government and Taliban movement.

Besides the Moscow format talks, there are plans to hold a UN-sponsored ministerial conference on Afghanistan on November 27-28 in Geneva.