KABUL (TOLO News): Mohammad Ismail Khan, a prominent member of Jamiat-e-Islami party and ex-Afghan mujahideen leader, on Wednesday strongly criticized president Ashraf Ghani’s policy and his administration’s military doctrine towards the Taliban insurgency, saying the Taliban never denounced violence in the country.
“I shall categorically say that the Afghan government is moving in the wrong way against the Taliban and committing a big mistake when it comes to the issue of the peace process. The Taliban never abandoned the war and they never stopped violence. This is the Afghan government that sometimes comes on the offensive mode,” said Mohammad Ismail Khan, the ex-mujahideen leader.
Referring to the proposed plan for the formation of the government’s peace delegation, Khan said that this will not lead to a breakthrough in the peace process with the Taliban.
“The Afghan government should rather think about its military supremacy and then force the Taliban to endorse a peace process–we also have to show the neighboring countries that the Afghan government has the power to take control of the war,” added Khan.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga (the lower house of parliament) expressed surprise at the dramatic surge in the scale of violence in Afghanistan following the US-Taliban peace deal signed in the gulf state of Qatar on February 29.
“It is not the war of the Taliban, it is the war of intelligence agencies in the region. The Taliban are not abiding by the peace agreement,” said Abdu Sattar Hussaini, a member of parliament.
Nevertheless, a number of political commentators in Herat have said that the ongoing political impasse that emerged in the aftermath of the dispute between President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah is also one of the factors that has led to a surge in the Taliban attacks.
“The lack of a unified position on peace and the continuation of the political differences over the power-sharing issues has also led to some kind of disappointment among the international community and the strategic partners of Afghanistan, this has also given more power to the enemies of Afghanistan,” said political commentator Abdul Qader Kamel.
“There is a need to prevent it (end the stalemate), because it has a significant impact on the morale of the security forces and could lead to further bloodshed,” said political analyst Abdul Ghani Khesrawi.
This comes a day after President Ashraf Ghani, in light of recent attacks in different parts of the country that killed dozens of civilians and security force members, ordered the Afghan forces to switch from “active defensive” mode to “offensive” mode, and to resume attacks on the Taliban, in a public address on Tuesday night.
The Afghan forces were in “active defensive” mode since late February when the Taliban agreed to reduce violence in exchange for signing a peace deal with the United States. But their attacks surged dramatically after they signed the deal in late February.
Ghani’s message comes after four deadly attacks that occurred in different parts of the country, including one in Kabul that targeted a maternity hospital, killing women and children, and an attack on a funeral ceremony in Nangarhar, that killed dozens.
The death toll of the attack on the maternity hospital in the west of Kabul on Tuesday has risen to 24, according to the Ministry of Public Health, which said that 16 others were wounded in the attack that ended after more than five hours of fighting on Tuesday.
Three attackers stormed the hospital ton Tuesday morning, shocking residents in Kabul who are already grappling with the sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.
