The US led international intervention in Afghanistan in late 2001 was to oust Taliban regime that had harbored the leader of global terrorist network, Osama Bin Laden, who orchestrated a deadly sophisticated attack on twin towers in the US. International community, in particular the US was welcomed by Afghan people as a "liberator" that liberated their country from the bondage of an atrocious regime.

In addition to this, Afghan people would see their peaceful future based on pluralism, tolerance and human rights in the presence of international community. Ten years elapsed but this presence yielded no tangible results in terms of providing protection against the reversal of democratic process and bringing peace, though this period inflicted a lot of sacrifices on Afghan people as well as international forces.

But this liberator has now lost its nature and is becoming the negotiator to legitimize those ousted forces as national liberation movement.

This is a hasty move that stems from war fatigue, which is a sense and realization of the fact that the costs of continuing the conflict is too high given the financial crises that have plagued the capitals. One of the main elements of a successful negotiation is realization of limits of armed struggle on the part of insurgents so as to opt for moving to politics.

But while we hear the willingness announced by Taliban to join the negotiation process only with international community, the initial liberator of Afghanistan from the captivity of Taliban regime, we also hear that Mullah Omar has been able to persuade Pakistani Taliban groups and fighters to cease their operations in Pakistan and come to Afghanistan to fight the so called Jihad against international forces deployed in the country.

This means the militants still have the potential to regroup to continue the armed fight. Afghan government, out of sheer fear of unsustainability of status quo, is passively taking stance on the ownership of the process but it is not clear about with what vision and mechanism it wants to own the negotiation process.

The lack of proactive engagement on the part of Afghan government versus Taliban's maneuvering in terms of their potential to continue the battle and their claim to adhere to their ideal-type state, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is giving rise to concerns that the process could lead to reconfiguration of power structures and subversion of human rights and democratization discourse in favor of the insurgency based on brutal ideology of tyrant and exclusive nature.

Unlike the US that is no longer adhering to the dominance of democracy and human rights discourse in Afghanistan, Taliban do persist their view of how Afghan state should look like if a political settlement is to be struck. Does it mean that Taliban feel to be emerging triumphant? and does it mean that they feel that now it is their turn to liberate Afghan people from occupation of international community and the US in particular?