KABUL — Thirteen Afghan civilians died in violence Sunday as the nation’s hard-line vice president expressed hopes for reconciliation and representatives of a militant group with ties to the Taliban brought their own draft of a peace deal to the capital.
Talk of reconciling with insurgents has done little to slow the fighting across Afghanistan, yet the issue is gaining steam, partly fueled by a “peace jirga” that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will host in April or May.
The Afghan government and others from the international community have had secret contacts with the Taliban or their representatives at the same time that thousands of U.S. and NATO reinforcements are streaming into the country to slow the insurgency.
Helmand province in southern Afghanistan was the scene of Sunday’s deadliest violence. A suicide bomber killed 10 civilians and wounded seven others when he detonated his explosives near an Afghan army patrol at a bridge in Gereshk.
In eastern Afghanistan, two civilians died when a roadside bomb exploded near a crowd celebrating the Afghan new year in Khost province. And in Wardak province, NATO said an elderly man was shot and killed by a joint Afghan-international force that mistakenly believed he was a threat.
Besides working on ways to reconcile with the Taliban’s top leaders, the Afghan government is finalizing a plan to use economic incentives to coax low-level and midlevel insurgent fighters off the battlefield. Pakistan, Iran and other international players, meanwhile, have begun staking out positions on possible reconciliation negotiations that could mean an endgame to the 8-year-old war.
Harun Zarghun, chief spokesman for Hizb-i-Islami, said a five-member delegation was in Kabul to meet with government officials and also plans to meet with Taliban leaders somewhere in Afghanistan. The group, which has longtime ties to al-Qaeda, was founded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and rebel commander in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s.
Spokesmen for the Karzai government could not be reached for comment.
Zarghun said the delegation is carrying a 15-point plan that calls for foreign forces to start pulling out in July — a full year ahead of President Barack Obama’s desire to start withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011. The plan also calls for the current Afghan parliament to serve through December. After that, the parliament would be replaced by an interim government, or shura, which would hold local and national elections within a year, according to the plan. Zarghun said a new Afghan constitution would be written, merging the current version with ones used earlier.
