Daily Times

Pakistani and Afghan religious scholars will hold talks in Islamabad on Friday to discuss a joint stance against the violence in the war-shattered Afghanistan, official and diplomatic sources said on Thursday.

A seven member Afghan delegation led by Atta-ur-Rehman Saleem, deputy of the High Peace Council, will lead the delegation in the talks with Pakistani scholars at the Foreign Office on Friday, they said.

Sources say the “ulema” meeting is part of the bilateral understanding under Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity and both sides are of the view that religious scholars have to play an important role in restoring peace.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Afghan officials had agreed this month on a meeting of scholars and officials in capital Islamabad to discuss agenda for a join conference of the scholars to issue a joint declaration about the violence in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan had long been urging Pakistan to seek help from the Pakistani scholars, who have influence on the Taliban, to reduce violence and encourage them join peace process.

Official sources, aware of the consultations for the conference, told Daily Times that Afghan scholars will suggest names of Pakistani counterparts whom they believe have influence on the Taliban in the meeting.

In May Pakistani scholars joined Afghan and Indonesia scholars at a trilateral conference in Indonesia that declared suicide bombings against Islam and also called for direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. A 15-member Pakistani delegation had forced the Indonesian and Afghan scholars to remove the Taliban name from the declaration.

Kabul wants Pakistani scholars to issue a similar edict against the suicide attacks which nearly 2000 Pakistani scholars had issued in January this year, which had declared suicide bombings in Pakistan against Islamic teachings.

Afghan ambassador in Islamabad Omar Zakhilwal had been active to persuade Pakistani religious leaders to use their influence on the Taliban. He had meetings with chiefs of Islamic parties like Maulana Sami ul Haq, Maulana Fazal ur Rahman, Siraj ul Haq and Fazal ur Rahman Khalil to seek their role in reconciliation with the Taliban.

In July, Saudi Arabia hosted an international conference of Islamic scholars, who declared Taliban war as “forbidden in Islam” in a declaration.

Pakistani clerics had stayed away from the Saudi conference after the Taliban dismissed the conference as an “American plot to justify their invasion of Afghanistan.”

Some scholars had earlier told Daily Times that were upset at the language the Saudi authorities had used in the invitation letter in which all groups fighting in Afghanistan were declared terrorists. Saudi embassy had also failed to coordinate with the Pakistani authorities to convince the scholars to attend the conference. Some clerics like Fazal ur Rehman Khalil, who is very close to Saudi Arabia, had also refused to travel to Saudi Arabia for the conference.

The Taliban has sent letters to the Pakistani scholars, urging them to ‘avoid participation in such conferences as the U.S. wants to weaken the ongoing holy war through conferences of the scholars’.

The Taliban’s letter says the ‘US wants to make Afghanistan as its subservient state’ and to establish military and intelligence bases to use Afghanistan’s strategic location for its objectives and weaken the Muslim world.

“If the U.S. succeeds in this sinister designs there is no doubt it will increase difficulties for Pakistan, India, Central Asia, and Arab countries,” the letter reads.

Pakistan ambassador in Kabul Zahid Nasrullah Khan on Thursday hosted dinner in honour of the Afghan delegation, at the embassy.

The ambassador told the delegation that Pakistan fully supports the Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process in Afghanistan.

Published in Daily Times, September 28^th 2018.