It is vital for the eventual success of intra-Afghan peace talks that the Taliban determine a coherent political vision, accept an open debate in Afghan society of its positions and demonstrate a willingness to compromise, the International Crisis Group said in a report on Tuesday.
Taliban’s vision should include clear positions on what it wants to change as compared with the post-2004 Afghan constitution and political system, and by what mechanism; how to protect the rights of women and minorities; and how to restructure Afghan security forces, including what role, if any, Taliban fighters should have therein, the report said.
It said that the Taliban has a long way to go before it reaches consensus on ideas for Afghanistan’s future.
The report comes days before the Afghan government and the Taliban are expected to begin negotiations in Qatari capital Doha.
ICG said that Kabul has been relatively transparent regarding its vision and can be expected to seek to preserve the status quo as much as possible.
“The Taliban’s political views are moreopaque, however, and predicting where they may and may not be amenable to compromise requires a greater degree of interpretation from a more limited set of data,” ICG’s report said.
Crisis Group said that it learned in July that Taliban leaders had begun to formulate a detailed negotiating position on government structure.
“This position was described as allowing voting for local and provincial government and preserving many social rights, but also insistent on having an emir with real power over national security issues and a high council of religious scholars and figures with sweeping authority – possibly akin to the framework of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” ICG said in the report.
As a movement representing tens of thousands of fighters and a wide geographic swath of rural Afghanistan, the Taliban need to accept the reality that any stable, lasting political settlement will require compromise, the report said.
“In spite of their military prowess and whatever advantages they perceive in their own negotiating leverage, large percentages of Afghan society have expressed rejection of their practices,” ICG said.
