Afghanistan: “we have enough problems to deal with already”

In that last piece, I mentioned that ISIS also carried out an attack in Jalalabad, Afghanistan this week. One quote from the Reuters piece I cited sums up Afghanistan’s current situation just about perfectly:

“This is a major concern for us if they carry out more attacks like this,” an Afghan security official said. “We have enough problems to deal with already.”

Yes, Afghanistan certainly does have enough problems to deal with already. The two main rival Taliban factions agreed a couple of weeks ago to a ceasefire and prisoner exchange, which could mean they’re no longer beating each other up and can focus more attention on destabilizing Afghanistan. Fighting in the Taliban’s Helmand province stronghold has been increasingly favoring the insurgents in recent weeks, so much so that people in the regional capital of Lashkar Gah appear to be fleeing in anticipation of a Taliban takeover. On the other hand, a reunified Taliban could also enable genuine negotiations with Kabul, and that was the subject of a four-way meeting held on Monday between representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States, and China:

Pakistan said Monday that incentives rather than threats would bring the Taliban to the negotiating table with Afghanistan, as representatives from the two nations met with counterparts from China and the U.S. in an attempt to revive peace talks.

The countries said after the meeting in Islamabad that they wanted immediate face-to-face discussions between the Taliban and the Afghan government, as they seek to revive talks that briefly took place in July last year at Murree, a hill resort outside Islamabad.

Pakistan, for a change, seems to be prepared to use whatever influence it has over the Taliban to try to leverage them into peace talks. This is because Islamabad is trying to negotiate a sweet trade and economic deal with China, the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which kind of hinges on stabilizing the region. That’s part of the reason why China was involved in the talks. Pakistan’s concern is that the Afghan government not put any preconditions on peace talks that might make it harder to get the Taliban to participate.

To add to the tension, what looked a couple of weeks ago like a possible thawing of relations between India and Pakistan may now be defunct, thanks in part to last week’s attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-i Sharif, Afghanistan. Afghanistan always suffers when tensions rise between India, with which it has historically had good relations, and Pakistan, with which it must have good relations if it has any hope of stabilizing itself.

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