President Ashraf Ghani, who addressed a Townhall meeting in Munich Security Conference on Saturday, stressed the need for an inclusive peace process and said peace needs to be citizen-centered not elite-centered.
“Peace needs to be citizen-centered, not elite-centered and because of it the forthcoming election in July is a must,” he said.
Ghani said Afghans are determined to go forward and that there is a need for political inclusion in the peace process.
“The peace that the Afghan public seeks is a sustainable peace, a peace that would last, not one that would conclude within five years,” he said.
The president said he initiated peace when he agreed to form a national unity government and agreed on a peace deal with Hizb-e-Islami as well as established a three-day ceasefire with the Taliban.
“Around 33,000 Taliban young fighters came to cities during [the] ceasefire,” Ghani explained. “The week before there were 1,000 casualties. In those three days, no one was molested, insulted, humiliated. It shows that our society is opting to overcome the past and choose the future.”
President Ghani talked about the upcoming consultative Loya Jirga, a traditional assembly, and said it will take place within a month.
He said that women from all Afghan provinces will attend a national debate “for the first time in the history of Afghanistan”. “They have already done elections on provincial levels,” he said.
