Pakistan sends 50-member team to Kabul to discuss cease-fire

The Pakistani Taliban — often known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP — are a separate group however allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized energy of their nation final August, because the U.S. and NATO troops have been within the last levels of their pullout from Afghanistan.

The TTP has been behind quite a few assaults in Pakistan over the previous 14 years and has lengthy fought for stricter enforcement of Islamic legal guidelines within the nation, the discharge of their members who’re in authorities custody and a discount of Pakistani navy presence within the nation’s former tribal areas.

The event comes after the newest cease-fire expired on Tuesday. An analogous truce between the TTP and Pakistan, brokered by the Afghan Taliban final November, lasted a month. Nonetheless, not one of the cease-fires have paved the way in which for a extra everlasting peace settlement.

Each side have remained silent about earlier talks in Kabul, the sticking factors between them and in addition in regards to the probabilities of an extension to the newest cease-fire. Analysts say a extra everlasting deal could possibly be attainable if both aspect is keen to indicate flexibility on what’s or isn’t acceptable to them.

Two senior TTP members who’re near the negotiations additionally confirmed the arrival of the 50-member group in Kabul. They informed The Related Press {that a} truce extension is linked to a “optimistic response” from the Pakistani authorities. They declined to elaborate and like the 2 safety officers, spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to speak to the media in regards to the negotiations.

There was no official remark from the Pakistani authorities or the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban usually use neighboring Afghanistan’s rugged border areas for hideouts and for staging cross-border assaults into Pakistan. They’ve been emboldened by the return to energy of the Afghan Taliban, who final dominated Afghanistan within the late Nineteen Nineties after they imposed their harsh edicts and interpretation of Islamic regulation, severely limiting the rights of ladies and minorities.

In Pakistan, the TTP insurgency has been centered within the distant former tribal area, now province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bordering Afghanistan.

Mahmood Shah, a Pakistani safety analyst, stated the Islamabad authorities despatched tribal elders to Kabul as intermediaries as a result of underneath Pakistan’s structure, the federal government can not negotiate — not less than in a roundabout way — with these waging an insurgency in opposition to it.

Pakistani authorities need an extension of the cease-fire so as to proceed the talks, he stated.

Shah served as an area official in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when the navy launched operations there after the 9/11 terrorist assaults in the USA, intently liaising between the navy and the federal government aspect, which allowed for first-hand information of operations in opposition to the TTP and different militant teams.

The negotiations in Kabul are troublesome, he informed the AP, as a result of for the navy, any “government-level talks with TTP are equal to changing the navy victory right into a defeat.”

Pakistani officers say the talks with the TTP are being overseen by Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, a former Pakistani spy chief who’s now the highest commander within the northwest.

In response to the 2 TTP members, the group requested Pakistani elders throughout Wednesday’s assembly in Kabul to scrap a 2018 regulation that did away with the semi-independent standing of the previous tribal areas that dates again to British colonial rule.

Islamabad is unlikely to provide in to such a requirement because the regulation paved the way in which for granting equal rights to thousands and thousands of residents within the restive areas as soon as they have been integrated into Pakistan’s authority as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

TTP additionally needs Pakistani troops to drag out of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, launch all of the TTP fighters in authorities custody and revoke all of the authorized instances in opposition to them.

Pakistan has demanded the TTP disband, settle for Pakistan’s structure and sever all its ties with the Islamic State group, one other Sunni militant group with a regional affiliate that’s lively in each Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Related Press writers Rahim Faiez in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.