Taliban calls peace jirga 'nonsense'

By Hao Zhou and Qiu Yongzheng in Kabul

As there is no Taliban representative attending the peace jirga, a traditional gathering of tribal elders, which starts Wednesday to seek national reconciliation across Afghanistan, the three-day jirga is "absolute nonsense," a Taliban commander told the Global Times in an exclusive interview outside Kabul on Monday night.

Afghanistan is today holding a peace jirga in Kabul to discuss President Hamid Karzai's plan to make peace overtures to the Taliban and other militant groups in a bid to build national consensus to end the nine-year war in the country since the US ousted the Taliban in 2001.

Around 1,600 Afghan tribal elders will convene in a giant tent at Kabul Polytechnic University to discuss peace-making approaches with Taliban fighters, most of whom are Pushtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.

"None of the community and political representatives came from the Taliban-controlled areas, and how dare you call it a national peace conference?" said Gulab Shah, a Taliban commander in Gilan district of southern Ghazni Province, southeast of Kabul. "It is absolute nonsense."

The Taliban has established 31 shadow governments throughout the total 34 provinces in Afghanistan, with provincial and military leadership appointed to give effective governance. In January 2010, it claimed to be in control of more than 70 percent of Afghanistan's rural areas.

Reportedly, the Taliban has been boycotting the jirga by killing the elders who were starting their journey to Kabul to attend the gathering. Gulab confirmed the report and said, "As long as the American and other foreign troops remain present in Afghanistan, there is no ground at all for such peace talks."

"All of the representatives attending the jirga are from big cities rather than from the Taliban-controlled rural areas. Whenever we meet them, we will kill them," said the 36-year-old commander, who was an investigator in the defense ministry of the former Taliban regime and now leads a dozen Taliban fighters in Gilan district.

Gulab told the Global Times, "In my district, all the people go to the Taliban government to file their complaints and settle their land disputes. We are much more efficient than Karzai's corrupt and ill-performing government."

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday that the Taliban is much stronger than NATO expected, according to Reuters. "I think we have to be honest and say they seem to be stronger now than we had expected when the international operation started back in 2001," Ras-mussen said.