KABUL, (Reuters) – Mid-level Taliban insurgency commanders do not believe their leaders have begun tentative peace talks with the Afghan government, with many vowing yesterday not to give up the fight after nearly 10 years of war.
NATO and Afghan officials have reported preliminary contacts between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the Taliban, although doubt surrounds when those contacts were made, who they were made with and what, if any, progress was made.
Karzai is pushing a negotiated settlement to the conflict and has launched a High Peace Council which has said it is prepared to offer concessions to bring insurgents to the table. Kabul and Washington say fighters must renounce violence.
Insurgency commanders from across Afghanistan indicated they were not involved in the initial contacts.
“No one has come so far and sat with the government and there is no hope that the Taliban will come and negotiate,” said Abdullah Nasrat, Taliban commander for Girishk district in the southern province of Helmand, a traditional Taliban stronghold.
“We basically hear the reports of talks through the press and do not believe in them,” he told Reuters by telephone. “As long as foreign forces are in Afghanistan, there will be no talks. Our morale is high.”
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. Record civilian and military casualties will weigh heavily when U.S. President Barack Obama conducts a strategy review in December.
The war will be a central part of discussions at a NATO summit in Lisbon next month.
Providing an upbeat assessment of recent offensives, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Berlin that insurgents in Afghanistan were on the back foot.
“The insurgency is under pressure, under pressure like never before in Afghanistan. Our aim for this year was to regain momentum,” Rasmussen said. “Now we have it.”
NATO commanders say the number of operations targeting senior Taliban members has increased dramatically since Obama authorised a 30,000 increase in U.S. troops last December.
Tarak Barkawi, a defence expert at Britain’s Cambridge University, said the stepped up activity, driven by U.S. and NATO commander General David Petraeus, aimed to put pressure on the insurgents while encouraging them to seek reconciliation.
He said the strategy had been backed by a big increase in special forces activity, and in the use of unnmanned aircraft to target insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas.
