CONFLICTING VIEWS WITHIN AFGHAN GOVERNMENT ON

C O N F I D E N T I A L KABUL 003503

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/26/2018
TAGS: PREL AF
SUBJECT: CONFLICTING VIEWS WITHIN AFGHAN GOVERNMENT ON
UNSCR 1267 DE-LISTING

Classified By: PolCouns Annie Pforzheimer, reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) Summary: Contacts within the Afghan National Security
Committee (NSC) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) appear
ambivalent regarding the overall value of de-listing
individuals from UNSCR 1267. FM Spanta's senior advisor said
that re-integrating individuals "won't change the Taliban"
but advocates instead a macro policy that, among other
tactics, puts pressure on Pakistan by threatening to put ISI
names on the list. End summary.

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NSC: Where is the information?
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2. (C) Poloff first met with counterparts at the NSC
regarding UNSCR 1267 in mid-August to request that the NSC,
which heads the Afghan UNSCR 1267 Sanctions Committee,
provide a list of the top priority candidates for de-listing.
At that time, Poloff was informed that the list already
existed and that the NSC would share it with Embassy Kabul
within a few days. After multiple phone calls and repeated
requests for the list, a follow-up meeting was finally
granted with Jamil Bahramy on October 27 at which he provided
information on twenty names to be removed from the list. A
second list of the top five individuals for de-listing was
provided on November 2. Bahramy told us that de-listing was
priority to the individuals involved, and something that
GIROA has been pushing for years, but by now the GIROA did
not expect any progress on de-listing due to international
community intransigence.

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MFA: It's the wrong approach
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3. (C) Meeting with Poloff on October 29, MFA Senior Policy
Advisor Davood Moradian stated that the U.S. should not
expend political capital trying to get Russia to agree to
de-list former members of the Taliban but suggested instead
that we should use the spectre of UNSCR 1267 to force better
cooperation from the ISI on rooting out Taliban operating in
Pakistan. Our focus on removing members from 1267, which he
described as a "micro" reintegration strategy, should be
replaced by a "macro" Pakistan strategy. Stating that we
have spent eight years pursuing a strategy that has "not
worked," Moradian advised Poloff that de-listing would
produce no measurable results in terms of dismantling the
Taliban. The current re-integration strategy, focusing on
integrating individual members of the Taliban, he said, is
all "pull."


4. (C) Moradian instead advocated a "push," as he sees it,
for elements among the ISI to be included in the UNSCR 1267
list as a deterrent to get the Pakistanis to stop aiding the
Taliban insurgency. Noting that he had raised eyebrows in
recent meetings in London where he advised this course of
action, Moradian admitted that it is unlikely any prominent
Pakistanis would actually be added to the list. However,
since the ISI has been a prickly partner on Taliban issues,
he said, alerting them to the possibility that Pakistanis
could end up on UNSR 1267 could be a powerful deterrent which
we have lacked in our relationship with the ISI.


5. (C) Moradian further advised that in his second term
President Karzai plans to pursue a new, holistic,
re-integration policy, which would likely include a
re-integration czar, and he advised that the international
community wait to pursue de-listing until it is clear how
de-listing will fit into this new strategy. He suggested
that moving forward, Afghanistan would like to see the list
become more dynamic, with listing and de-listing more easily
facilitated. The Afghan government has suggested new names
for inclusion, including drug lords, and have been unable to
get traction thus far. Putting new people on, he said, was
more of a priority than removing names from the list.


6. (C) Discussing the regional perspective, Moradian said
that the criteria the Russians have laid out for taking
people off UNSCR 1267 are impossible to meet and they are not
the only regional player with concerns about taking people
off the list. The Indians, he said, are also in opposition,
as are the Chinese, who he believes have allowed Russia to
publicly voice the concerns that the Chinese privately share.
If we are to expend political capital with the Russians on
their cooperation in Afghanistan, he suggested that urging
the Russians to be more helpful in intelligence sharing and
in providing economic aid would provide much greater
dividends than trying to bring them around on the UNSCR 1267
issue.
EIKENBERRY