The Indonesian government is urged to approach and build trust with all relevant stakeholders in the Afghan conflict. This is important to ensure that all parties will be willing to attend the trilateral forum of clerics.
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AFP PHOTO/Shah MARAI
Afghan security forces keep watch near the site of an explosion in Kabul on March 9, 2018. A suicide bomber on foot blew himself up in Kabul\'s Shiite area on March 9, 2018, killing at least seven people, officials said, in the latest attack in the Afghan capital.
JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The Indonesian government is urged to approach and build trust with all relevant stakeholders in the Afghan conflict. This is important to ensure that all parties will be willing to attend the trilateral forum of clerics from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, which will be held in Jakarta in late March.
The executive of Indonesia’s largest Muslim mass organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Marsudi Syuhud, said the NU had held dialogues on Afghanistan. All relevant stakeholders were willing to join the NU’s three meetings in Indonesia and in Turkey. “The NU approached [the stakeholders] one by one,” he said in Jakarta on Monday (12/3).
Marsudi said that sending invitations would not be enough to induce parties in conflict with one another to attend such meetings. Organizers must first gain the trust of all parties in a conflict. If any one party still refused to attend the meeting, this probably indicated that the trust-building process was lacking. The government must find out why the party declined the invitation.
Indonesia is planning to hold the Trilateral Forum of Clerics in late March to follow up the Second Kabul Peace Conference in an effort to achieve peace in Afghanistan. The plan is that 15 clerics each from Indonesia, Afghanistan and Pakistan will participate in the forum.
However, as reported, the Taliban has urged Afghan clerics not to attend the forum. They accused the forum of being nothing more than an attempt to justify the foreign occupation of Afghanistan (Kompas, 12/3).
Without the Taliban’s participation, Marsudi said, the meeting would only involve parties that have agreed to peace. The ultimate goal of the meeting was to enable all parties in the conflict to sit down together.
As part of efforts to achieve peace in Afghanistan, peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban is also to be held on March 26-27 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. However, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the Taliban was expected to be absent at the meeting.
Up to Monday, the Taliban had yet to confirm that they would attend the meeting, signifying that they would not participate in it. Those expected to attend the meeting in Uzbekistan are Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, US Deputy Foreign Secretary John Sullivan, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto and the foreign ministers of India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Turkey.
AFP PHOTO/SHAH MARAI
In this photograph taken on February 13, 2018 shows an Afghan amputee walking with his prosthetic legs at a hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for war victims and the disabled in Kabul. More civilians were killed in suicide bombings and complex attacks in Afghanistan in 2017 than any previous year of the conflict, a UN report said on February 15, as militants ramp up assaults on cities.
Expansion
Reports from Afghanistan said that Taliban militias were expanding the areas under its control. Farah Province spokesperson Naser Mehri said that since Sunday, Taliban militias had occupied downtown Anar Dara in Farah province, western Afghanistan. Gun battles continue between government forces and Taliban militias.
The local administration said local police and intelligence offices were still under government control. However, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said that the Taliban had occupied Anar Dara. The group published photos showing the militia in control of various parts of Anar Dara. They have reportedly seized a large amount of ammunition and combat vehicles in the city.
The claim was made a few days after the Afghan government reported that the group was becoming increasingly cornered in Farah. The government’s statement was based on land and air assaults conducted by Afghan and US forces. Apart from in Farah, attacks on the Taliban also occurred in neighboring Helmand.
Through their victory in Anar Dara, the Taliban wished to show that they were far from surrendering. They still controlled almost half of Afghanistan and were steadfastly refusing to recognize the Ashraf Ghani administration, which many foreign countries recognize as the legitimate government.
The Afghan government’s claim of land under its control is similar to the claim made by the US forces, a staunch ally of the Ghani administration. According to the US’s Afghan task force, the Afghan government controls 56 percent of the country. The rest is under the control of the Taliban and several other groups, with the Taliban being the largest group.
