| | Kai Eide lashes out The Guardian
03/19/2010
By Lyse Doucet
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In a BBC interview, the former UN mission chief, says Pakistan's recent arrests of Taliban leaders have damaged peace prospects
This a transcript of Lyse Doucet's BBC World Service interview tonight with Kai Eide. He says bluntly that the effect of the Pakistani arrests of Abdul Ghani Baradar, and a dozen or so other senior Taliban figures in recent weeks has been to set back the prospects of a dialogue, and that Pakistan must have known its actions would have that effect.
KE: Of course I met Taliban leaders, of course I met Taliban leaders during the time I was in Afghanistan. Anything else for me would have been unthinkable, given the emphasis I was placing on it myself, and the mandate that we have. And remember, also, I am a Norwegian and Norwegians always believe in an engagement policy.
Q: What's significant about any meetings is just how senior, how authoritative, the representatives are. Did you meet members of what is called the Quetta Shura, which is one of the main decision bodies for the Taliban leadership?
KE: I believe I can say yes. That is the case. We met senior people in the Taliban leadership and we also met people who have the authority of the Quetta Shura to engage in that kind of discussion.
Q: Of course when they call it the Quetta Shura it's named after the city in Pakistan. The Pakistanis deny the existence of a Quetta Shura, but it's largely believed to be the decision-making body under the authority of Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban. Did he know about these talks?
KE: I find it unthinkable that such contact would take place without his knowledge, and also with his acceptance.
Q: When was your first contact? First by letter?
KE: The first contact was probably spring last year. Then, of course, you moved into the election process, where there was a lull in activity, and then communication picked up again when the election process was over, and it continued to pick up until a certain moment a few weeks ago.
Q: What moment was that?
KE: That was around the moment when the first arrests took place of Taleban representatives in Pakistan.
Q: The first person to be arrested was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the number two in Taliban command, as I mentioned. He was picked up in the Pakistani city of Karachi. It was said to be an operation done
with American intelligence and Pakistani intelligence. It was described by both the Pakistanis and the Americans as a lucky accident. What do you say?
KE: The intent is unclear to me, because I don't know the circumstances. Then comes the question of the impact. Now his arrest was followed by the arrest of at least ten, twelve, fourteen other rather prominent Taliban members, and what I can say is that the effect of that in total, certainly, was negative on our possibility of continuing the political process that we saw as so necessary at that particular juncture.
Q: When you say negative, what happened?
KE: Most communications stopped. .
Q: So the channels stopped?
KE: Yes.
Q: Do you think that was the intention of Pakistan?
KE: Let me put it this way. If your question had been 'do I believe that Pakistan plays the role it should in promoting a political dialogue that is so necessary for ending the conflict in Afghanistan?' then my question (answer?) would be no, the Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played. They must have known about this. I don't believe that these people were arrested by coincidence. They must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing, and you see the result today.
Q: There are many interpretations of reasons for these arrests. One is that Pakistan wanted to stop this channel of dialogue, not just with you, but with the representatives of the Afghan government, including President Karzai, some of his brothers, because Pakistan wants to be in control of this process. Pakistan denies this, but what do you say to that interpretation?
KE: I find that interpretation to be probably the right one.
Q: Did you share all this with the United States privately?
KE: Some of it, yes.
Q: Because senior military and political officials in the United States say it's not the time for talks. We heard from General Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, saying the Taliban think they have the initiative. Mullah Omar and others are not going to come to the table any time soon, he said.
KE: I believe, on the contrary, that talks are long overdue and had we really engaged in them some time ago, then we could have progressed further than we have today.
Q: There are many who believe that the Taliban believe they are winning. There's a presence in almost all of Afghanistan's thirty-four provinces. Why should they talk if they feel they can prevail and it may be only a matter of time before the foreign troops leave?
KE: I think I have experienced over thirty-five years of engagement in international affairs that we very often misjudge our opponents, or the other side. We did that in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies. We did it in the nineties, and we do it again, I believe, and that perhaps if we had seen it from the point of view of the Taliban, maybe we would have come to a different conclusion than the one we've come to today. I believe that what has happened over the last few weeks may well have hardened the Taliban rather than moved them closer to the table.
At the time of posting this, the interview does not seem to be up on the BBC site, so apologies for the absence of a link.
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