Taliban offers ceasefire in move towards Afghanistan peace deal

THE TALIBAN has given a US envoy a document outlining its offer for a temporary ceasefire in Afghanistan, Taliban officials say.

The offer is seen as an opportunity to open a window to an eventual peace deal for Afghanistan that would allow the United States to bring home its troops and end the 18-year war, America’s longest conflict.

The ceasefire offer was handed to Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington’s envoy for talks with the insurgents, late on Wednesday in Qatar, a Gulf Arab country where the Taliban maintain a political office.

Mr Khalilzad has been pressing for a ceasefire but it was not immediately clear whether the Taliban proposal would be enough to allow for the on-again off-again talks between the Taliban and the US to restart, with the aim of eventually signing a peace deal.

Previously, Mr Khalilzad said a US-Taliban deal would also include the start of negotiations among Afghans on both sides of the conflict to hammer out a socalled road map to a post-war Afghanistan.

That road map would tackle thorny issues such as a permanent ceasefire, women’s and minority rights, and the fate of thousands of Taliban fighters and also militias loyal to Kabul’s warlords.

But the Taliban has been refusing to talk with the Kabul government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and chief executive Abdullah Abdullah.

The two are currently fighting over who won last year’s presidential elections.

The initial vote count gave Mr Ghani the win but Mr Abdullah, who came in second, is contesting the count. A final outcome has yet to be announced by Afghanistan’s election commission.

Last September, the Taliban and the US appeared close to signing a deal when an upsurge in Taliban attacks, including the killing of another US soldier, prompted President Donald Trump to scrap the talks.

On Thanksgiving, during his first visit to US troops in Afghanistan, President Trump softened his stance, saying the Taliban were ready to make a deal, though both Kabul and Washington insisted the Taliban would have to show a sign of good faith by reducing the attacks.

In December, the Taliban leadership based in Pakistan agreed to put forth a temporary ceasefire offer.

A Taliban official said that mistrust has long characterised the US-Taliban talks and that the insurgents hesitated to offer a more permanent ceasefire without having US troops pull out first.

Should the truce deal fall, returning Taliban fighters to the battlefield with the same intensity could be a problem, the official said.

“There was a thinking within the Taliban ranks that it would be difficult for them to reorganise fighters after a break in fighting,” said the official.

Taliban fighters were also unwilling to lay down their arms, “thinking it’s their fighting that’s forcing the US to come to the table”, he said.

The Taliban controls around half of Afghanistan and continues to stage near-daily attacks targeting Afghan and US forces, Afghan government officials or those seen as loyal to the Kabul administration – but many civilians are also dying in the crossfire of the insurgent attacks, as well as in operations against the Taliban carried out by Afghan and US forces.

The Taliban think it’s their fighting that’s forcing the US to the table. Official for the Taliban.