The current political regime in Afghanistan is born of the great sacrifices of Afghan people. It is not an easy job to build a political regime, where all citizens see political and democratic struggle as the only and the best way for transfer of power, especially in a country like Afghanistan, whose history is riddled with violence and bloodshed for takeover of power. Afghan people have made enormous sacrifices for reaching this stage, and the preservation of the political system remains to be their common responsibility. There is no doubt the government may be weak, but it is the sole structure, as a representative of the people, that reserves the exclusive authority to decide key national issues.
A number of political parties, whose majority leaders and members were involved in the civil war, and are accused of human rights abuses, want to form a separate negotiating team for peace talks with the Taliban. They allege that they are the only side that can convince the Taliban to give up fighting against the government. Afghan government strongly opposes the proposition. Speaking at the maiden meeting of the newly formed Advisory Peace Board, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Abdullah said the government is the only party authorized to hold peace talks with the Taliban.
In democratic societies, political parties are authorized to play the role of an opposition that can oversee, and/or criticize government performance and policies, but never reserves the right to bypass all government structures and negotiate peace with anti-government elements and their foreign backers, particularly in countries like Afghanistan, where the majority of political parties are individual-oriented, and focused to protect their partisan interests than those of the nation. By the same token, political parties in Afghanistan do not have the influence that they can decide key issues such as peace. Here the political parties are in a position where a nephew of the leader of a political party that considers itself as one of the country’s leading political parties had nominated himself as an independent candidate in the previous parliamentary election. If the political parties claim being influential and powerful, why almost all their members had run for seats in the parliamentary election as independent candidates throughout the country. It all shows that they know where they stand in terms of constituency, but are only pretending to be representing the people in a bid to protect their personal interests, because they fear that they will lose the power they currently have if there is peace in the country.
