Taliban negotiator’s arrest vexes Afghans

KABUL, Afghanistan - A top Taliban commander in the midst of peace negotiations with the Afghan government has been detained in the United Arab Emirates, Afghan officials said Thursday. The arrest was seen in Afghanistan as thwarting long-term reconciliation efforts between insurgents and President Hamid Karzai’s government.

Afghan officials said Agha Jan Motasim, the Taliban’s former finance minister, was taken from his family’s home by United Arab Emirates authorities about a month ago, just as Karzai’s government was growing optimistic about a breakthrough in peace talks.

“Known and secret enemies of peace in Afghanistan continue sabotaging our peace process,” said Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai.

United Arab Emirates officials declined to comment on Motasim’s arrest.

U.S. officials raised doubts about Motasim’s role as a prominent peace negotiator, saying his ties to the Taliban leadership had faded in recent years. U.S. officials added that Motasim’s arrest was unrelated to his role as a peace negotiator.

But Afghan officials said Motasim was the best chance Afghanistan had at a peace deal. In recent years, he had held meetings with current and former Taliban members, expressing hope for the peace process. He gave interviews to international media outlets to broadcast his plans for reconciliation to a wide audience.

In the United Arab Emirates, Afghan officials said, Motasim proved particularly helpful, agreeing to meet with Afghan emissaries in March and attempting to recruit high-level members of the Taliban to the peace process.

But he had long been detached from Taliban leaders - first in Turkey where he identified himself as an emissary from the organization and then in the United Arab Emirates. Many Western officials questioned his Taliban credentials, even as Karzai seemed to invest in Motasim’s ability to put an end to the insurgency.

For years, one of the biggest hurdles to reconciliation efforts has been finding Taliban negotiating partners who are perceived as legitimate by the group’s leadership in Pakistan. Publicly, the Taliban have largely dismissed the peace process as fruitless and referred to Karzai as only a “stooge.”

In June, after what appeared to be significant progress, peace talks in Doha, Qatar, were derailed after a Taliban office raised a banner declaring it an outpost of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the name under which the Taliban ruled the country before the U.S.-backed invasion.

Since then, Western officials have expressed little optimism about the peace process. But Karzai has independently pursued reconciliation through his government’s High Peace Council, which deemed Motasim a key intermediary.

A statement from the council Thursday referred to “the esteemed Motasim” as “one of the Taliban’s important leaders.”

Afghan officials said they had not been formally told why Motasim was arrested, but that they heard explanations from individual members of the United Arab Emirates government.

“He was meeting certain suspicious people, and the Emiratis were worried about him,” said one Afghan official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Other officials argued that, even though the circumstances surrounding Motasim’s arrest remained unclear, it was perceived by Karzai officials as a sign of foreign interference.

“We know there are those trying to block the peace process, and they’ve helped arrange Motasim’s arrest,” said another Afghan official.

Although Afghan officials have not pointed to any proof that would link Pakistan to Motasim’s arrest, Afghanistan’s eastern neighbor is widely seen in Kabul as abetting insurgents and stymieing peace efforts.

Karzai saw peace with the Taliban as the potential crowning jewel of his presidency, which is likely to end when elections are finished this summer. Motasim’s arrest is perceived by many in Kabul as making that accomplishment even less likely.

“We have asked the UAE government to remove restrictions [on Motasim] and take immediate action for the solution of the problem,” said the High Peace Council statement. Information for this article was contributed by Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post.