Afghanistan: a slow peace process

The peace process in Afghanistan is having a hard time staying on track. The agreement signed between the Taliban and the US administration in early March was undoubtedly a milestone. It was the beginning of the end of a war in which Washington has been immersed for almost two decades without apparently obtaining too many tangible results.

However, the ratification of the pact in Doha, Qatar, represented just the beginning of a road that, to date, has proved to be full of potholes and curves. The talks between the US and Afghan fundamentalists, already long and uneven, were not accepted by President Ashraf Ghani's Executive. It made sense: until a few months ago, the Taliban had refused outright to negotiate with Kabul, since they considered the national government to be a mere puppet of the real power, located in the White House.

The Doha agreement managed to alleviate that and mapped out the route for the Afghan Government to take part in the negotiations later on. It has not been easy: the Islamists have, on more than one occasion, broken the ceasefire that was an unavoidable condition for dialogue. The negotiations have been clouded by the commission of several deadly attacks by operatives associated with the jihadist group. 

However, against all odds, the process is slowly moving forward. It is not yet known, in general terms, what exactly the Taliban's share of power will be once a pact for lasting stability in Afghanistan has been reached. It is likely that months of talks will be needed to clarify this and other general issues.

More specifically, one of the main points around which the negotiations have revolved is the exchange of prisoners between the two parties. Last month, President Ghani undertook, by means of a decree, to release no fewer than 5, 000 Taliban prisoners from prison. In return, the insurgent group must release 1, 000 prisoners belonging to the state security forces. The process had slowed down considerably, precisely because the Islamists had not shown much sign of complying with the ceasefire. 

The White House's special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, put some pressure on Kabul: he urged the Afghan administration to speed up the release for fear that COVID-19 might spread more quickly among the country's prison population. 

In any case, the wake-up call seems to have had some effect. The prisoner exchange has already begun. The International Red Cross certified on Monday that the Taliban had released the first 20 prisoners. To date, the Afghan Government, for its part, has already released 300 Taliban who were still in prison. 

Through his official Twitter profile, Khalilzad has acknowledged that this is an “important step” in the peace process and in reducing violence. Again, he has urged both sides to increase their efforts to mitigate, to the extent possible, the effects of the coronavirus on the captives.

Afghanistan is a highly vulnerable country to the pandemic. The structural fragility of its health system is compounded by the fact that hundreds of people have been crossing the border in recent weeks from Iran, one of the main sources of virus transmission in the Middle East. Officially, the country has recorded 665 cases, with 21 deaths and 32 people recovered, but the actual figures could far exceed those provided by the Administration.

In recent days, Afghanistan has also made headlines for an operation by its armed forces in which Abdullah Orakzai, alias Aslam Farooqi, perhaps the most prominent Daesh leader in Khorasan Province (ISKP), was arrested. Farooqi was arrested in Kandahar province along with 19 other terrorists, according to the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan government's intelligence service.

Farooqi is believed to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Afghans. One of the most recent attacks is the suicide bombing of a Sikh temple in Kabul on 25 March, which killed 25 people.

Since Farooqi's arrest was made public, there has been much debate about his custody. Pakistan requested his extradition to stand trial before its courts, as he is a Pakistani national and was “involved in anti-Pakistan activities,” according to the official letter. As the two countries have no extradition treaties in force, Kabul had to consider the specific request. Its response was negative: Farooqi will be tried in Afghanistan.

Despite the pretexts offered by the authorities in Islamabad to retain the jihadist leader, there are experts who provide a radically different point of view. According to research by the European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS), Farooqi - and thus Daesh's branch in Afghanistan - has numerous links to various terrorist organisations based in Pakistan, such as the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as to institutions in the country, most notably the ISI ('Inter-Services Intelligence', the influential secret service of the administration).

In the past, the ISI has raised a lot of controversy because of the double game it plays in the fight against terrorism. On the one hand, it has presented itself as a necessary ally of the United States in the region, and on the other hand, it has provided safe haven to Al-Qaida-related groups and has financed and trained armed organizations active in Kashmir.

In some ways, its connections to Afghan terrorists should not come as a surprise. After all, as the EFSAS report points out, a very prominent fraction of ISKP-affiliated fighters come from the ranks of Tahrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani branch of the Taliban. Farooqi himself has a background in Lashkar-e-Taiba, an organisation that has been active along the border with India and is responsible for the Mumbai attacks of November 2008 (173 people killed).

The data reflected by EFSAS, which has been echoed by the Afghan press, come from the Afghan secret services. The NDS is still investigating the extent of ISKP's involvement in Pakistan. Farooqi's interrogations focus precisely on clarifying his connections with other terrorist groups and with the ISI.