KABUL ¯ A year ago, Shafiullah Nooristani, a religious scholar from eastern Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, was shivering in a rudimentary, snow-covered cell after a month in Taliban captivity, wondering if each day would be his last.
Today, his rural district is still under Taliban control, but as a member of the government-appointed Afghan High Peace Council, his job is to try to persuade local insurgent commanders to give up their armed struggle. During a trip home in early November, he said, two of them accepted.
Scrutinizing a much-discussed, little-understood, bloody video is in some ways representative of how the outside world now watches the war.
“I invite them to talk, and I tell them that if they keep on fighting, no roads or schools will be built and Nuristan will stay poor and backward,” Nooristani said last week. “But the key is working through our common tribal base. It was the tribe that negotiated my release last winter, and it is the tribes that can help us negotiate peace now.”
The High Peace Council has had a rocky two-year history, marred by controversy over appointees and the Taliban assassination of its leader, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, 14 months ago. But today, the 70-member group has begun showing unexpected signs of progress and energy under its new head, Rabbani’s son Salahuddin, 41, a Western-educated diplomat who was most recently Afghan ambassador to Turkey.
Beyond its members’ success in wooing homegrown Taliban commanders to join the peace process, the council has made recent headway with a larger and cooler customer, the government of next-door Pakistan. Officials there have paid lip service to the peace process, but they have also maintained long-standing ties with the Taliban and are believed to provide sanctuary for anti-Afghan insurgents.
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