News Analysis: Will latest Afghan gov't peace talks succeed?

A delegation of Afghan government- backed peace body the High Peace Council and Taliban representatives begun a two-day meeting in Doha on Sunday with the mediation of the non-governmental agency the international Peace Initiators Pugwash to find a solution for Afghanistan's ongoing crisis.

Although the peace talks could raise a ray of hope among the embattled Afghans, Afghan political observers are looking to the meeting in Qatar with pessimism.

The ongoing Qatar meeting, according to Afghan observers, is comprised of unofficial roundtable talks among Afghans to exchange views on how to find a peaceful solution to the ongoing conflict and ensure lasting peace in the war-torn country.

"Taliban representatives in the meeting once again repeated the outfit's old stance and called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan, therefore the talks won't led to national reconciliation," political watcher Khan Mohammad Daneshjo told Xinhua on Monday.

Citing Taliban precondition as an excuse, the analyst said that the U.S.-led allied forces completed their pullout from Afghanistan in late 2014 and just 13,000 troops had been left to train Afghan forces.

"Since powerful countries and regional powers are not present in the Qatar talks to pressurize the Taliban's foreign backers to encourage the hardliner outfit to move towards peace, the Qatar talks will end in a fiasco," Daneshjo, who is also the editor-in- chief of the daily Abaadi maintained.

Like many Afghans, Daneshjo pointed the finger at Pakistan as the main supporter of Taliban militants, saying Pugwash is not in a position to pressure Islamabad to help make the Qatar talks succeed.

The analyst also said that the Taliban warmongering policy and launching multifaceted offensives in Kunduz, Badakhshan and other provinces exposes their resolve for war rather than peace.

Taliban militants fighting the government to regain power and re-establish their brutal reign in Afghanistan, kicked off their so-called annual spring offensive on April 24 and since then hundreds of people including insurgents, security personnel and civilians had been killed in the conflict-ridden country.

Even on Monday which is the second and last day of the talks in Doha, a suicide attack in Kabul, according to the Interior Ministry, had left one person dead and injured 15 others.

"If the Taliban really wants peace and stability in Afghanistan they should stop fighting," lawmaker Fatima Aziz told local media, adding that such meetings were also held in 2011 in the same place -- Qatar and since then thousands of Afghans had been killed.

"I don't trust the Taliban and neither do the people of Afghanistan," the legislator stated.

The government of Afghanistan has been striving over the past decade to bring the Taliban outfit into the political mainstream but all efforts have so far been in vain.

President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and his predecessor the former Afghan President Hamid Karzai had frequently offered peace talks to the Taliban but the hardliner outfit had downplayed the offers and instead pushed for war.

Karzai described Taliban militants as dissident brothers and his successor Ghani has termed them as political opposition, meaning that political differences should be solved through political means.

Nevertheless, the Taliban outfit has termed both Karzai and Ghani as "foreign puppets" saying no talks will be held with Kabul rulers in the presence of "foreign occupying troops" in Afghanistan.

According to Afghan analysts, different terrorist groups have been fighting in Afghanistan and some of them prefer fighting to sitting around the negotiating table.

"The meeting in Qatar between the Taliban and the High Peace Council could facilitate the ground for official peace talks," political analyst and renown journalist Fahim Dashti told local media.

However, the analyst was of the view that some of the extremist outfits such as the Haqqani network and stateless insurgents from Chechen, Pakistan and other countries would fight till the last.

"The Afghan peace process is a complex issue and the emergence of the so-called Islamic State or Daesh in Afghan battles has further complicated it," another political watcher Najib Manalai said, adding that the people of Afghanistan will not be able to embrace peace in the near future. Endi