Trump’s bid for hasty Taliban deal risks deja vu in Afghanistan
·(C) 2019, BLOOMBERG ·FEB 02, 2019 - U.S. negotiators seeking to end America’s longest war are trying to re-assure current President Ashraf Ghani this time will be different as they near a framework agreement with the Taliban, which controls about a third of the country’s territory. It’s not going well.
The last time a foreign power withdrew troops from Afghanistan, peace talks collapsed and the Taliban dragged the body of the country’s former president through the streets in a gruesome public execution.
“Peace talks with a minority group of Taliban behind locked doors won’t succeed,” Ghani told a group of 2,500 youths in Kabul on Wednesday, according to a statement from his office.“we are thirsty for peace at the earliest opportunity, but it should be sustainable so your children can’t be victimized by violence again.”
Ghani’s apprehension shows the difficulties President Donald Trump faces as he looks to withdraw some 14,000 American troops without plunging Afghanistan into a similar period of chaos that led to the Taliban’s rise in the 1990s.
The U.S. and the insurgent group struck “agreements in principle on a couple of very important issues” during talks in Qatar, Zalmay Khalilzad, the Trump administration’s special envoy on Afghan reconciliation, said in a statement this week.