New Delhi: Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said India should support and be a part of the US-led peace talks with the Taliban.
“We support the American peace process. We hope to make it successful and we hope all countries, especially our friends in India, should be on board and support the peace process,” Karzai told ThePrint Thursday.
India has made it quite clear in the last few years that it will not negotiate with the Taliban, and maintained that a dialogue for negotiations has to be led by the Afghan government.
Karzai is in India to attend the Raisina Dialogue that started Tuesday. The dialogue has been organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
Karzai also said Afghanistan hoped the peace process would smoothly continue, and that an intra-Afghan dialogue would begin soon.
Intra-Afghan dialogue is a key feature in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s proposed seven-point plan. The plan includes the Afghan government speaking to the Taliban, as well as Pakistan and other stakeholders, after the departure of foreign troops from there.
The US-led peace process, under which America plans to withdraw its forces from the war-torn region completely, came to an abrupt halt last year in September as US President Donald Trump refused to negotiate with the Taliban after the killing of US soldiers there.
The 18-year-old war was initiated by the US in response to the terror attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001.
‘It isn’t our war’
The former Afghan President added: “It isn’t our war. It isn’t our conflict. It’s somebody else’s. Why should we be dying fighting someone else’s war? It’s Afghans being put against another Afghan.”
Karzai also said India is an important “friend” of Afghanistan, but Pakistan is their “brothers” and “we need them for peace in Afghanistan”.
“…We have to convince Pakistan about this…We’ve serious complaints against the Pakistan government and their military for interfering in Afghanistan,” he said.
Karzai also said Pakistan and Iran are Afghanistan’s “most influential neighbours”.
“So peace in Afghanistan depends (on) how we evolve our relation with Pakistan. We have the issue of the Durand Line,” Karzai added.
The Durand Line divides Pakistan and Afghanistan and is nearly a 2,500-km-long open border. But no one in Afghanistan, not even the Taliban, is willing to accept the Durand Line as the nation’s legitimate eastern border.
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