On Thursday May 30, President Hamid Karzai addressed an assembly on rural development in Kabul. Although he repeated what has been saying over the last few months, certain points of his speech can be deemed important.
On peace process President Karzai said that his administration had come to know that certain countries wanted to sabotage the process by trying to mold it towards their own objectives. “If they do not stop meddling into peace process, we will expose them,” he said.
Established in 2010, the High Peace Council (HPC) which is mandated to facilitate peace talks with Taliban has had more losses than gains. HPC has not been able to arrange for any direct talks with Taliban leadership. At the same time, Taliban instead of giving any attention to the calls of Karzai administration have gone target killing influence members of HPC including Burhanuddin Rabbani who was once the president of Afghanistan and led the HPC until he was killed by a suicide bomber inside his home in 2011.
Apparently, Mr. Karzai is trying to gloss over the failures of HPC. If he is not doing so, he must expose the names of the countries that are trying to disrupt the peace process before the people of Afghanistan without any delay. Afghans have the right to know this fact. It has been emphasized that the peace process should be Afghan-led, inclusive and open to the public. Nevertheless, the government has been trying to keep issues pertaining to this process as secret.
In his Thursday address he also said that security agreement with the US was in favor of Afghanistan. However, he said there was no hurry and his government had some pre-conditions for allowing the US to maintain military bases in Afghanistan.
Karzai said the U.S. should pay for the agreement, a reference to a demand for rent to lease up to nine bases in Afghanistan. He didn’t say how much money Afghanistan wants, but it’s thought to be over $6 billion. Previously he had said that the U.S. must commit to boost Afghan security, strengthen its armed forces and provide long-term economic development assistance.
The US and Afghan governments has been in talks over security agreement since the last couple of months. The agreement is being deemed as pivotal to address the concerns of the people of Afghanistan about their future up to a great extent. However, Mr. Karzai is not in hurry. He does not want to repeat mistakes of the past Afghan governments and rulers. One of these mistakes, Karzai said was the Durand Line agreement.