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New Delhi: The Western countries are planning to divide Taliban fighters and establish peace in Afghanistan, a report said on Thursday.
Moreover, the countries are also hoping that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar could also become a part of the peace process, said The Daily Telegraph.
An international conference in London will unveil a fund of hundreds of millions of pounds to lure Taliban fighters to renounce violence and draft a timetable to hand over security responsibilities to local forces. The programme will be for low- and mid-level members of the Taliban who are described by Western diplomats as "non-ideological".
According to the report in The Daily Telegraph, the leaders will seek plans to "reintegrate" half the estimated 25,000 Taliban fighters with promises of new jobs.
The aim is to "divide the insurgency" with the military continuing to pursue the "hard-core Taliban", it added.
However, diplomats are expected to also float the idea of employing the ex-fighters in the Afghan Army and the police forces as part of local militias that they have been targeting.
The so-called "USD 10 Taliban" are said to fight for a day rate because they need money and have "nothing else to do", noted The Daily Telegraph.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is scheduled to address delegates from about 70 nations in London, seeking to win new international support after more than eight years of combat which is threatening to exhaust public good will in the West.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen will join talks which are expected to set targets to transfer security control of several Afghan provinces to the local police and military.
“We will be trying our very best to be ready to defend the major part of our country from two to three years — and when we reach the five-year end point, that`s when we would be leading,” Karzai said on Wednesday, following talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He envisages Afghanistan`s government taking control of security in all 34 provinces by 2015.
Afghan reintegration a ‘trick’: Taliban
The Taliban have dismissed an Afghan government plan aimed at persuading fighters to lay down their arms in return for cash as a "trick", saying the only solution to the war would be the withdrawal of foreign troops.
In a statement posted on the eve of the conference on one of their websites, (www.alemara.co.cc/), the Taliban said the plan was a "trick" and that the Islamists would not be weakened by any scheme pushing for militants to lay down their arms.
"They think the mujahideen of (Afghanistan) will be enticed by money or by positions of power ... such thoughts are baseless and futile and have no truth," said the statement, which was also e-mailed to media on Wednesday.
It also reiterated the Taliban`s long-standing position that the only way to end the conflict, now in its ninth year, was for foreign troops to leave the country.
There are more than 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including some 70,000 Americans, fighting a resurgent Taliban who have managed to spread their attacks out of traditional strongholds in the south and east into previously peaceful areas.
To try and turn the tide, Washington is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan this year, some of whom have already begun to arrive. Other nations are sending around 7,000 more.
(With Agencies’ inputs)
