White House Orders Direct Taliban Talks to Jump-Start Afghan Negotiations

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Gen. John W. Nicholson, the commander of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was instrumental in initiating last month’s rare cease-fire. As further indication that he is an active part of the new peace effort, he has as an adviser a member of the team that made the initial contacts with the Taliban around 2011.

Those early efforts fell apart after disagreements with the Afghan government, then led by President Hamid Karzai. Still, the Taliban established a political commission by moving some of their officials to Doha, Qatar, in the Persian Gulf. In 2014, the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the American prisoner of war who had been kidnapped by the Taliban after he walked off his base, was negotiated through the Doha office.

Another brief moment of hope occurred in 2015, when Afghan officials and representatives of the Taliban met at a resort town in Pakistan. But the credibility of the Taliban representatives who came to the table was questioned, and the process collapsed when news emerged that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, in whose name they were negotiating, had actually been dead for three years.

Even if talks do begin again, many observers point to how difficult they will be.

Seth Jones, who heads the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said there was little evidence that the Taliban’s senior leaders were seriously interested in settlement terms acceptable to Afghan and American officials.

“Most Taliban leaders believe they are winning the war in Afghanistan and that time is on their side,” Mr. Jones said.

David Sedney, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who dealt with Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that while grass-roots peace movements in Afghanistan could upset old calculations, progress on the battlefield and in talks with the Taliban remains dependent on effective pressure on Pakistan, where the insurgent leaders have sanctuary.

What undermines that pressure, he said, is a lack of patience and a “reflex impulse” to judge the new American strategy as doomed so soon after it began.



Source : Nytimes