Preparing for next week’s Istanbul conference, the Afghan government’s High Council of National Reconciliation is trying to get ready by poring over 25 distinct peace proposals offered by different political parties.
The council is trying to get all those plans together, with the hope that they can consolidate some of them and boil them down into some sort of consensus proposal for the talks themselves.
A lot of proposals from other countries are expected to come during the meeting, with the US and others also preparing to push different ideas. President Ghani is keen on his own plan, which started to leak over the weekend.
Expecting the Afghan negotiators to juggle 25 plans is unrealistic, though clearly it’s not politically tenable to just push Ghani’s idea when so many others are being offered by parties of note.
The hope is that these talks will get progress going again on peace, after months of questions.