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Summary The U.N. Security Council decided in June 2011 to treat al-Qaida and the Taliban separately.
A new U.N. sanctions regime targeting the Taliban has encouraged overtures by the militant groups leaders but many obstacles remain before talks with the Afghan government can begin, let alone end a war that continues to rage, a U.N.-appointed monitoring team said in its first report Tuesday.The Taliban ruled Afghanistan for five years before being driven out of power in the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001 and has been fighting President Hamid Karzais government since it took power. In a move aimed at supporting the Afghan governments reconciliation efforts and more effectively fighting global terrorism, the U.N. Security Council decided in June 2011 to treat the Taliban and al-Qaida separately when it comes to U.N. sanctions.In a report to the council analyzing the impact of the new Taliban sanctions regime, the monitoring team concluded that there will be many upsets before Afghanistan is firmly on the road towards peace, stability and security. But the team has no doubt that the sanctions regime can help clear the way, the report said.The Security Council imposed sanctions against the Taliban in November 1999 for refusing to send Osama bin Laden to the United States or a third country for trial on terrorism charges in connection with the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The sanctions a travel ban, arms embargo and assets freeze were later extended to al-Qaida and remain in effect in the new Taliban sanctions regime.The report said implementing the sanctions is a challenge in a country which borders six nations and has many un-policed roads, where less than 7 percent of the population has a bank account, where large areas are too dangerous for the government to operate, and which is rife with corruption.In addition, 114 of the 131 Taliban and Taliban-associated individuals who are subject to the new sanctions regime have been subject to identical sanctions since 2001 under the al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions regime, the report said. Though not all are still active, the sanctions have clearly had limited impact on those who are.The monitoring team also found that the number of times any of the 192 other U.N. member states have applied any of the three sanctions is very low.Nonetheless, the team believes that the sanctions have had an important deterrent effect on listed individuals who may have wished to travel or use formal banking services, it said.The monitoring team noted that it was not long after the Security Council split the Taliban and al-Qaida sanctions regimes last year that the Taliban made public their decision to enter talks.As the emphasis in Afghanistan shifts from military activity to political activity and U.S. and coalition forces prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014, the team said, there is a greater chance that the sanctions will make a difference. Both the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban have set out their conditions for reconciliation.Essentially, the government conditions renouncing violence, breaking with al-Qaida, and accepting the constitution are the reverse of the criteria set by the Security Council for imposing sanctions, and mirror the requirements for a listed individual to have his name removed, the report said.The Taliban conditions for peace the withdrawal of foreign forces, the release of prisoners, and the removal of their names from the sanctions list suggest that sanctions matter, the report said.They will matter even more if implementation is effective, the monitoring team said. The new sanctions regime provides for exemptions to the asset freeze and travel ban, and the team predicted that decisions on granting exemptions are likely to have as big an impact on the promotion of a political process in Afghanistan as will the full implementation of the measures.
