According to a report, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif in an interview told in Washington last week, that Pakistan wants to resume Afghan peace process and seeks to play a crucial part in this quadrilateral session which seeks to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiation table. The Quadrilateral Cooperation group was first able to meet in 2016 and had five further sessions, with the last one being held in May 2016 in Muree. Previously four meetings have taken place, which were able to make some progress. China’s was particularly encouraged to participate in order to help Pakistan and Afghanistan negotiates their differences. Pakistan was hopeful that China’s involvement would answer its major concerns particularly when it concerns to India’s involvement in Afghanistan. The Afghan government hoped China’s influence would help persuade Islamabad to build a more constructive relationship with Kabul. The international community was more welcoming of the quadrilateral talks because all the 4 member countries involved are seen as crucial players in maintaining peace and security in Afghanistan. But the fifth session is said to fall apart due to fake news leaked by the media in Kabul, which mentioned Pakistan as possibly hiding the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar who later died in Karachi in 2013. This news leak was able to derail the talks as officials from each of the four government opted to back off from further consultations. On May 21, 2016, Mullah Omar’s successor, Mullah Mansour died in a US drone strike in Balochistan, which was able to further delay the peace talks. After that Pakistan made several attempts to restart the talks but none of the four parties seemed to be very interested to resume the negotiations. The people of Afghanistan are badly suffering due to prevailing decade’s long wars and instability. The situation in Afghanistan has considerably deteriorated as the Taliban continue to target US and Afghan installations. Afghanistan problem needs concrete, durable and result oriented dialogue among all stakeholders by keeping the interests of Afghanistan more supreme. After more than sixteen years of military operation, the situation could not be controlled and no tangible results could be achieved. Sincere efforts should be initiated to start this peace process again and to bring all stakeholders on table so that the war ravaged country could get peace and stability.
