Kabul: Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai on Saturday said that he personally held peace talks recently with the insurgent faction Hizb-i-Islami, appearing to assert his own role in a US-led bid for negotiations to end the country’s decade-long war.
Karzai made the announcement hours before he was to meet with American special representative Marc Grossman to discuss progress and plans for bringing the Taliban insurgency into formal talks for the first time. “Recently, we met with a delegation from Hizb-i-Islami … and had negotiations,” Karzai told a meeting of the Afghan parliament, adding, “We are hopeful that these negotiations for peace continue and we will have good results.” Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan’s northeast and launches attacks against US forces from Pakistan.
Its leader, powerful warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former US ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington. Karzai’s statement was also a reminder that any negotiations to end Afghanistan’s war will be more complex than just talking to the Taliban. Besides Hizb-i-Islami, there is the powerful Haqqani network. All the insurgent factions have separate leaderships and priorities. By showing he can bring other factions to the negotiating table, Karzai may hope to increase his standing in a tentative peace process that has recently been dominated by Washington. (PTI)
