Taliban not keen on U.S., Afghan peace deal
WASHINGTON — Despite U.S. support, the Afghan government’s surprising new peace offer to the Taliban is immediately running into a wall. The insurgents show no sign of shifting from their demand that talks for a conflict-ending compromise take place with Washington, not Kabul.
The impasse is blocking a diplomatic path out of America’s longest-running war and could prove as fateful as fortunes on the battlefield.
The Trump administration says it’s escalating pressure on the Taliban to advance a negotiated solution to the fighting. But diplomacy is a distant second to military efforts right now, and the U.S. isn’t offering carrots of its own to persuade the insurgents to lay down their arms.
Laurel Miller, who until last June was a senior American diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the U.S. should be clearer about what it’s willing to negotiate on, including when it might start pulling forces from Afghanistan. “That could set the stage for talks,” she said.
Such a timetable seems a remote prospect, and President Donald Trump has consistently railed against the idea of telling the enemy when the U.S. might leave. The U.S. involvement in the Afghan conflict is now in its 17th year, and 10,000 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in 2017 alone. All sides are hung up on even the format for potential negotiations. The Obama administration’s peace push, which relied heavily on Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan, floundered in 2015.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s new effort, announced at an international conference in Kabul this past week, includes incentives for insurgents that join negotiations and enter the political mainstream. The government would provide passports and visas to Taliban members and their families, and work to remove sanctions against Taliban leaders, he said. The Islamist group could set up an office.
Alice Wells, America’s top diplomat for South Asia, endorsed the overture and said the “onus” was on the Taliban to demonstrate they’re ready to talk, “not to me or the United States, but to the sovereign and legitimate government and people of Afghanistan.”
With wounds and emotions still raw in Kabul after a wave of brutal Taliban attacks in Kabul in late January, Ghani’s offer was a significant olive branch.
Barnett Rubin, a New York University expert on Afghanistan who advised the Obama administration, said: “The trouble is that the major issue the Taliban is interested in talking about is the one he has no control over — the presence of American troops in Afghanistan.”
Top Afghan security officials maintain back-channel discussions with Taliban, The Associated Press has learned, but the officials’ efforts are not coordinated and more formal talks are impeded by the Taliban’s insistence that its “Islamic Emirate,” ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 for hosting al-Qaida, remains Afghanistan’s legitimate government.