Speaking at the United States Institute of Peace, President Ashraf Ghani’s National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar on Thursday said some countries in the region have ties with the Taliban and that this will harm regional consensus on fighting terror.

The meeting was held under the theme of Progress on Peace and Stability in Afghanistan by the US Institute of Peace. 

“While there is a regional consensus on peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, but the consensus on fighting terrorists, has broken slightly,” he said. “There are actors in the region that draw a distinction between good and bad terrorists. And unfortunately, another sign of that breakdown of consensus is that we all agreed to have state to state relations for counterterrorism, but there are those who look at state to non-state actor’s relations for counterterrorism with serious implications for all of us.” 

He also talked about the Afghan government’s peace offer to the Taliban and called on the group to play their role on the peace process through the Qatar office otherwise the office will be closed. 

“It is not just the Taliban and the Haqqani Network that we are fighting; increasingly, we see foreign fighters associated with at least three categories of terrorist networks. The global terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda, Daesh, IS-Khurasan. The regional terrorist such as IMU, ATIM from central Asia and China. And Pakistani terrorists such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Jaish-e-Mohammed. All these four categories, the Afghans, the global, the regional and the Pakistanis have some biotic relationships among themselves,” said Atmar. 

President of the US Institute of Peace Nancy Lindborg meanwhile said at the event that as part of the efforts for peace, next week Afghan President Ghani will open a conference for peace talks with Uzbekistan president in Tashkent.

“Next week President Ashraf Ghani will open a conference together with president of Uzbekistan on regional support for a peace process,” Lindborg said.