One of the main insurgent groups fighting the Afghan government and its NATO backers has said it is ready to make peace and act as a bridge to the Taliban if the U.S. began pulling out troops next year, as planned.
A spokesman for a delegation from the Hezb-i-Islami, which has been holding talks in Kabul this week with President Hamid Karzai, said the group's initiative was prompted by Barack Obama's declaration that American forces would begin to be drawn down.
“There is a formula: ‘no enemy is an enemy forever, no friend is a friend forever,' ” Mohammad Daoud Abedi told Reuters. “If that's what the international community with the leadership of the United States of America is planning — to leave — we had better make the situation honourable enough for them to leave with honour.” The talks between Karzai and Hezb-i-Islami appear to be at an early stage, and it is unclear how ready the Afghan President is to strike a deal with the group's leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a ferocious warlord who was responsible for reducing much of Kabul to rubble with his artillery in the 1990s.
It is also unclear how much influence Hezb-i-Islami would have on the Taliban. The two groups have had a volatile relationship and clashed this month in northern Afghanistan.
“We have only one common situation with the Taliban, which is the withdrawal of the foreign forces and the freeing of the country from the occupation,” Abedi said. “The rest of the things, they have their opinion and we have ours.” He added, however, that his group could be “a bridge between [the] two sides”.
The Hezb-i-Islami delegation presented a 15-point peace plan to Mr. Karzai, which included a demand for foreign forces to begin withdrawing in July this year, but Abedi signalled that the group could be flexible on dates if Washington demonstrated good faith. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010
