In a decision that should have been taken much earlier, the names of five former Taliban ministers were removed from the UN Security Council’s ‘blacklist’ after having been sanctioned in late 2001 for having links with al-Qaeda but the move failed to have any impact on some of those whose names were deleted and was summarily rejected by the mainstream Mulla Omar-led Taliban movement.

The five men who are no longer under sanctions are former Taliban and are part of the Afghan government or living under its protection. The Taliban leaders have time and again made it clear that they don’t represent their movement.

Former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, who has been living in Kabul since 2005 under government protection after being freed from the US military prison in Bagram in Afghanistan, tops the list of the five Taliban who until now were under UN sanctions. He had surrendered to the US forces in February 2002 two and a half months after the Taliban regime.

As he didn’t take the Taliban leadership into confidence before surrendering, the Taliban are still not willing to forgive him. In fact, their distrust of Mutawakil, who belongs to Kandahar, would increase now that he has found favour with President Hamid Karzai and the US and its allies and his name has been taken out from the ‘blacklist.’

With regard to the UN Security Council sanctions, which include ban on international travel and freezing of bank accounts and other assets, neither had any real impact nor tightly applied. Mutawakil undertook international travel despite being under UN sanctions when he paid a visit last year to Saudi Arabia as a guest of the Saudi government and performed Umra. In fact, that visit by him and other former Taliban officials fuelled misplaced speculations that Saudi Arabia was trying to mediate between the Taliban, the Karzai government and the US.

The other four Taliban officials whose names were removed from the ‘blacklist’ include Abdul Hakim Munib, former deputy minister of tribes and border affairs, Mohammad Musa Hotak, the ex-deputy planning minister, Haji Fazl Mohammad Faizan, former deputy commerce minister and Shamsul Safa Aminzai, a senior media official in the Taliban foreign ministry in Kabul.

Munib defected to the Karzai government soon after the collapse of Taliban regime and has held official positions including as governor of Urozgan province, known as a Taliban stronghold.

The others too dissociated from the Taliban subsequently. In fact, Musa Hotak was elected member of lower house of parliament from his native Wardak province. The fact that the names of these former Taliban officials were still in the UN ‘blacklist’ explains the inefficient manner in which the Security Council’s sanctions committees operates. All five were living peacefully and had not fought against the Afghan government or the US-led coalition forces after the fall of Taliban regime. It seems the UN list was never reviewed and was drawn up and forgotten. Now it has been dusted days before the international conference on Afghanistan in London where President Karzai is expected to unveil his so-called “reintegration” plan under which the UN Security Council would be asked to remove the names of some Taliban members.

There were originally 144 Taliban figures on the UN ‘blacklist’ and sanctions were slapped on them in 2001. As Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, pointed out recently, some of the Taliban on this list have died and others are no longer fighting. He backed the proposal for reviewing the list and removing the names of those Taliban members who have left their movement or were living peacefully.

It was also interesting to know that Mutawakil and the other four Taliban officials whose names were deleted from the UN list weren’t impressed by the gesture. Mutawakil and a few others told reporters that it was unjust that their names were placed in the ‘blacklist’ in the first place and they were deprived of their basic rights without having been tried or convicted in any court for having links to al-Qaeda.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan who was delivered to the US by Islamabad and has been living in Kabul after his release from the Guantanamo Bay prison, termed it as a good gesture. However, he argued that the western nations have to go beyond the review of the UN list and take meaningful steps to bring peace to Afghanistan.

The mainstream Taliban led by Mulla Omar referred to the UN decision as a non-event by pointing out that the five men were no longer part of Taliban movement. Taliban sources said the move would have no impact on the Taliban resistance against the foreign forces in Afghanistan.

By: Rahimullah Yusufzai