Karzai govt ready to bring former Taliban back to fold

As Kabul gears up for the hectic politicking leading up to the Loya Jirga on December 10, the Karzai Government on Wednesday made it clear t...

As Kabul gears up for the hectic politicking leading up to the Loya Jirga on December 10, the Karzai Government on Wednesday made it clear that it is willing to reconcile with Afghans who ‘‘out of accident’’ or ‘‘extreme necessity’’ joined the Taliban.

Making explicit what till now has been a general perception among observers here, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman and advisor Jawed Ludin said majority of the Taliban cannot be held responsible for what people like Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden did. ‘‘They joined out of extreme necessity. Today, they are back in the villages and they are Afghans who enjoy the same rights as other Afghans,’’ he said.

	Pak wants India away from Afghanistan: PM

			BIKANER: Expressing his concern over the Al Qaeda re-grouping in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Tuesday asked Pakistan to change its policy and sever all links with terrorism if it wanted to improve relations with India. ‘‘Al Qaeda and Islamabad do not like India’s role in rebuilding of war-ravaged Afghanistan and want us to keep away from there so that Pakistan can get involved,’’ he told an election rally here. (ENS) Story continues below this ad

Ludin was quick to add that this did not apply to those who formed the Taliban’s ‘‘core group’’. ‘‘Of course, there is no place for those who ordered killings or for those who were responsible for destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas.’’

With the Loya Jirga slated to accept the draft constitution — which has been under discussion for the past few months — Karzai and his team say Kabul’s policy has to be one of inclusiveness. They are quick to refute any suggestion that the Afghan Government is dealing with what some call the ‘‘Moderate Taliban’’.

According to Ludin, Taliban was a movement of ‘‘foreign elements’’ and was essentially ‘‘non-Afghan in character’’. When asked about the so-called Moderate Taliban, he said: ‘‘There was and there is nothing like Moderate Taliban. There was just the Taliban which no longer exists in Afghanistan.’’

The Karzai Government is of the view that the Afghans have been a fractured society apart from facing the ‘‘foreign enemy’’. The developments after 9/11 and the setting up of an Interim Administration under Karzai, they add, has generated much hope, which can only be sustained ‘‘inclusive politics’’.

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Nearly 2.2 million Afghans, Ludin said, have returned to Afghanistan in the past two years. Over a million displaced Afghans have now returned while the population of Kabul itself has trebled.

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