Daily Times

WASHINGTON – Pakistan in an attempt to resume the quadrilateral peace process that can help set an end to the Afghan war has asked all the concerned group members to meet in Muscat, Oman, on Oct 16th.

United States, Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan are the members of the group.

Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif in an interview told VOA Urdu in Washington last week, that Pakistan seeks to play a crucial part in this quadrilateral session which seeks to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiation table.

The Quadrilateral Cooperation group were first able to meet in 2016 and had five further sessions, with the last one being held in May 2016 in Muree.

Previously four meetings have taken place, which were able to make some progress. China’s was particularly encouraged to participate in order to help Pakistan and Afghanistan negotiates their differences. Pakistan was hopeful that China’s involvement would answer its major concerns particularly when it concerns to India’s involvement in Afghanistan.  The Afghan government hoped China’s influence would help persuade Islamabad to build a more constructive relationship with Kabul.

The international community was more welcoming of the quadrilateral talks because all the 4 member countries involved are seen as crucial players in maintaining peace and security in Afghanistan.

But the fifth session is said to fall apart due to fake news leaked by the media in Kabul, which mentioned Pakistan as possibly hiding the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar who later died in Karachi in 2013.

This news leak was able to derail the talks as officials from each of the four government opted to back off from further consultations. On May 21, 2016, Mullah Omar’s successor, Mullah Mansour died in a US drone strike in Balochistan, which was able to further delay the peace talks.

After that Pakistan made several attempts to restart the talks but none of the four parties seemed to be very interested to resume the negotiations.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the situation has considerably deteriorated as the Taliban continue to target US and Afghan installations.  The result of which is the successive Trump administration seeks to follow a policy where it is able to force Taliban into negotiations.

Heather Nauert, US State Department’s spokesperson at a recent news briefing in Washington expressed her reservations about the peace efforts especially when she raised the question of Taliban’s non-official diplomatic post in Qatar.

“We’ve been now in that war for 16 years” but “they have not been able to come to any kind of peace and reconciliation, so just by having folks sit around in Qatar, in probably a pretty cushy life there, has not demonstrated, has not brought to the table any kind of significant peace efforts,” she said.

“At least for our influence on Taliban today, there is mistrust,” Mr. Asif told VOA Urdu, going on to say that “today Russia has more influence on the Taliban than Pakistan does”.

Despite the level of differences and concerns over issues within all the four members of this group, one thing is set that all the members do wish to seek peace in Afghanistan and are likely to participate in the upcoming Muscat meeting.