As Afghan people continue to go through an open-ended tragedy, the United Nations Security Council has removed the names of fourteen Taliban members from its black list. The UN said in a statement that the names had been removed to prepare the ground for successful peace talks with the Taliban. This happens while on Thursday, July 14, 2011, the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said that the first half of this year was the deadliest six months for civilians in the country since the decade-old war began.

The casualties come with surge in Taliban's terrorist activities while Afghan government and its authorized High Peace Council have been trying to reconcile with Taliban and bring them to the negotiation table. The government has tried to convince the UN to remove the Taliban leaders from its blacklist, which subjects the militants to asset freezes and travel bans.

The UN's report of civilian deaths shows a 15 percent increase compared to the first half of 2010, due to roadside and suicide bombings, increased ground fighting and more deaths from air strikes. It also says that Taliban militants are responsible for 80 percent of the deaths. The Taliban insurgents have set withdrawal of foreign forces as precondition to negotiate an end to the conflict. But according to the UN report, "Violence rose as (insurgents) sought to demonstrate that Afghan security forces could not manage security on their own."

If the presence of international forces provides a justification for the hard-liners to kill and injure people, they have to decrease their destructive activities when foreign forces begin to withdraw from the country. The pattern shows that they only have not reduced their deadly activities but also have increased them. Unfortunately, on one side the suffering of Afghan people continues to increase and on the other side the Taliban militants that are responsible for this suffering are receiving gradual impunity.

It means the fundamentalists are intent upon taking over the country and establishing their own idealistic government based on their totalitarian interpretation of Islam. Taliban's this approach will definitely run counter to Afghan people's efforts to preserve the democratic gains made over the last ten years.
Afghan people wish to continue to build a pluralistic and multi-ethnic Afghanistan with tolerant Islam, which is the true essence of the conspicuous faith of Islam.