Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Religious scholars in Pakistan and Afghanistan have reportedly agreed to hold conferences in both countries to explore ways for peace and to encourage the Taliban to join the reconciliation process.

Syed Ehsan Tahiri, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, a body mandated to opt for talks with the Taliban groups, said Pakistani and Afghan clerics had agreed to hold joint meetings to discuss peace in Afghanistan in accordance with Islamic teachings.

The spokesman told Mashal Radio in Kabul that Pakistan had agreed to organise the meetings in Islamabad and also join similar meeting in Kabul that would be attended by hundreds of scholars from both sides.

The comments came days after Afghan, Indonesian, Pakistani and Indonesian ulema met in Indonesia and “appreciated and supported” President Ashraf Ghani’s dialogue offer to the Taliban during a conference of nearly 30 countries and international organisations in Kabul in February. The Indonesian conference in its declaration had also described suicide attacks as against the principles of Islam.

President Ghani had welcomed the outcome of the Indonesian moot that was opposed by the Taliban when it was initially planned in March. The High Peace Council also hailed the declaration and described it as a major success.

Although the Indonesian conference did not issue an edict against the Taliban, the event could be seen as an embarrassment for the Taliban as some of scholars, who are considered as sympathisers to them, became part of the declaration to throw weight behind Kabul’s political overture.

Maulana Anwarul Haq, deputy chief of the madrassa Haqqania in Akora Khattak, and brother of Maulana Samiul Haq was one of the senior Deobandi scholars, who attended the meeting with another teacher of his religious school and renowned cleric Maulan Azizur Rehamn Hazarvi, who heads a religious school near Islamabad.

Anwarul Haq’s reported remarks that Taliban should stop fighting were quickly denied by the cleric himself in a video and also by a spokesman for Haqqania as those were not taken well by the Taliban. In order to pacify the Taliban, Maulana Anwarul Haq, even said that he had “represented the Taliban” in the conference and that he told the delegates that Afghan conflict could not be resolved unless the US-led foreign troops leave Afghanistan.

Sheikh Muhamamd Idrees, another teacher at madrassa Haqqania, was part of the delegation, besides senior Deobandi scholar Mufti Muhammad Naeem of Jamia Binoria, Karachi. Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil, who previously headed Harkatul Mujahideen, and now is the chief of Ansarul Ummah, also endorsed the declaration. The US State Department had added Khalil to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorist in September 2014.

Encouraged by the Indonesia declaration, the Afghan government has now stepped up efforts to seek the role of Pakistani religious leaders, “who have influence on the Afghan Taliban”. But the Taliban insist such meetings will not have any impact on their armed resistance.

“These gatherings cannot harm us as these processes have lost credibility,” an Afghan Taliban leader said when asked about the proposed Pak-Afghan ulema meeting.

As part of Kabul’s quest for the greater role of the scholars in the peace process, Afghan president Ghani had pressed for a greater role of ulema during his meeting with Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa in October, according to a participant of the meeting. The army chief later met a delegation of ulema in Karachi and sought their help to encourage the Afghan Taliban give up fighting and join political process.

Afghan government now eyes another major initiative by Saudi Arabia to host an international ulema conference, most probably in July, to issue a decree against the war in Afghanistan.

Published in Daily Times, May 21^ST 2018.