WANA/ISLAMABAD, Dec 23: Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has made reconciling warring factions in Afghanistan a top priority, military officials and western diplomats say.

According to commanders deployed in the border region, he is backing dialogue partly due to fears that the end of the US combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 could energise a resilient insurgency straddling the shared frontier.

“There was a time when we used to think we were the masters of Afghanistan. Now we just want them to be masters of themselves so we can concentrate on our own problems,” a military officer stationed in South Waziristan said.

“Pakistan has the power to create the environment in which a grand reconciliation in Afghanistan can take place,” he said in Wana.

“We have to rise to the challenge. And we are doing it, at the highest level possible.”

On Dec 7, Gen Kayani hammered home his determination to support a negotiated end to the war in Afghanistan at a meeting of top commanders at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

“He said Afghan reconciliation was our top priority,” said an intelligence official who was briefed about the meeting.

Diplomats in Islamabad also argue that Pakistan has begun to show markedly greater enthusiasm for western-backed attempts to engage with Taliban leaders.

“They seem to genuinely want to move towards a political solution,” an official from an EU country said.

“We’ve seen a real shift in their game-plan at every level. Everyone involved seems to want to get something going.”

Gen Kayani appeared to signal that the army’s conception of its role in Pakistan and the region was changing in a speech to officers in Rawalpindi last month. “As a nation we are passing through a defining phase. We are critically looking at the mistakes made in the past and trying to set the course for a better future.”

The army chief ordered the country’s biggest offensive against the militants in 2009, pouring 40,000 troops into South Waziristan in a bid to decisively tip the balance against the growing challenge they posed to the state.

Outsiders are largely barred from the tribal belt, but Reuters was able to arrange a rare three-day trip with the military last month.

Security appeared to have improved markedly in South Waziristan since the offensive, but the visit also underscored the huge task the army still faced to gain control over other parts of the border region.

Haji Taj, who runs a seminary for boys and girls in Wana, said militants were still at large in surrounding mountains.

“Outside the army camp, it’s Taliban rule,” he said.

Gen Kayani, a career soldier who assumed command of the army in 2007, has been a key interlocutor with Washington during one of the most turbulent chapters in Pakistan-US relations.

He has earned a reputation as a thoughtful commander who has curbed the military’s tendency to meddle overtly in politics.

With his support, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has held repeated rounds of discussions with Afghan counterparts, and in November Pakistan released more than a dozen Taliban prisoners.

The move aimed to reassure the Afghan government and Pakistan’s allies of Islamabad’s good faith and telegraph to the Taliban that Pakistan was serious about facilitating talks.

“There is a change in political mindset and will on the Pakistani side,” Salahuddin Rabbani, chairman of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, told Reuters. “We have reason to be cautiously optimistic.”

Seeking to overcome a bitter legacy of mistrust, Pakistan has also built bridges with Afghan politicians close to the Northern Alliance, a constellation of anti-Taliban warlords who have traditionally been implacable critics of Islamabad.

Gen Kayani flew to Kabul last month for talks with President Hamid Karzai and accompanied Ms Khar on a visit to Brussels to meet top Nato and US officials in early December.

However, Afghan officials are irked by Pakistan’s refusal to release Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s captured second-in-command who is seen as a potentially significant go-between with the militants.

Even with Pakistan’s unambiguous support, diplomats warn that there are unanswered questions over what form any peace process might take, and whether Taliban hardliners will engage.

‘NO OTHER WAY’: According to diplomats, Gen Kayani’s growing support for dialogue is d      riven to a large extent by a realisation that the United States is intent on sticking to its Afghan withdrawal plans.

A series of high-profile attacks in Pakistan in recent months, including a Dec 15 raid on the Peshawar airport, has sharpened concerns that instability in Afghanistan could invigorate Pakistani militants.

Hawks in Pakistan’s security bureaucracy may balk at the idea of supporting dialogue unless they can be certain that any future settlement will limit India’s influence in Kabul.

But officers deployed in outposts clinging to the saw-toothed peaks of the frontier fear they may soon face an even fiercer fight unless the leaders of the insurgency in Afghanistan can be persuaded to talk.—Reuters