Both at Doha and Moscow Afghan government delegates were not invited to sit with the Taliban, lending weight to ground realities and a widely-held perception that President Ghani is now a spent force in Afghanistan. But that's not acceptable to Ghani. Known to insiders, he would not give up on his mischievous mindset, hence his two tweets on the death of Professor Ibrahim alias Arman Loni. He has expressed his "serious concern about the violence perpetrated against peaceful protestors and civil activists in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan." And, how come Amrullah Saleh would remain silent; he went a step further tweeting "we are connected by bonds of history, geography and culture and also suffer from the same circle of perpetrators." The protestors the Kabul rulers were concerned about are activists of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM). They were protesting the death of Arman Loni at the hands of police during a protest march - while the post-mortem report rules out violence as cause of his death. No wonder then that almost all the known political leaders and parties representing the Pushtun areas have strongly rejected President Ghani's unsavoury tweets. At the official level, Pakistan has advised the Afghan president to "look inward and address the grievances of his own people."
How ironic, however, it is that President Ghani expresses concern about the Pushtun in Pakistan while it is Pushtun-majority in his own country that is pulling the rug from under his feet. This majority, called the Taliban, can break the bread with their erstwhile Afghan opponents, but do not concede any role to President Ghani in the intra-Afghan dialogue. He is incensed because what could be even more hurtful to his ego when he finds his masters, the United States, too, sitting with the Taliban. President Ghani should know that his time is up as well as of his coterie. But that said in no way the government in Kabul should be denied its role in the Afghan peace process. If it costs Ghani's political survival, let it be so. Expectedly, there is a new normal to the Afghan imbroglio. The signs, both tangible and intangible, emitted from the Moscow meeting undeniably suggest that today's Taliban are not a proxy for some hostile power; they are sons of the soil and want to be part of its governance.
And, as we welcome moves for an all-embracing Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace in Afghanistan we do call for an independent, judicious appraisal of the PTM's agenda. They are Pakistanis and wish be treated as such, both in terms of recognition of their rights and their right to protest if they feel that being denied. Given that PTM is mainly based in Pushtun areas, including those where military action was required in the recent past, it is all the more critical that the movement is not infiltrated by anti-state terrorist outfits. Its grievances - and there are quite a few - must be looked into and addressed.