U.S. envoy said to talk to Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban officials have met in Pakistan with the top U.S. diplomat who recently led peace negotiations with them, current and former members of the insurgent group said Saturday.
It was the first such meeting since President Donald Trump halted the talks last month, calling off a deal that had already been broadly agreed upon and blaming an uptick in Taliban violence.
The meeting in recent days in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, between Taliban
officials and the U.S. diplomat, Zalmay Khalilzad, came after a surge in bloodshed. The Taliban had spent days concentrating attacks across the country before last week’s Afghan presidential election, in an effort to derail the electoral process and keep voters from the polls.
A State Department spokesman, as well as Taliban spokesmen, declined to comment. Reuters on Friday was first to report the meeting.
The discussions between the two sides were informal, the Taliban members said, and did not indicate the beginning of a new round of peace discussions, only that one may take place in the future. Since Trump canceled the talks and a possible peace deal, Washington has been quiet on the United States’ future strategy for Afghanistan.
More than 14,000 U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan and Trump has repeatedly expressed his frustration with their continued deployment, complaining they have taken on the duties of policing the country, a job he said the Afghan government needed to do.
The Taliban members remained uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the meeting, but two Taliban representatives, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, confirmed the meeting without providing details.
A news website with deep access to senior Taliban officials reported that Khalilzad had met “repeatedly” with the Taliban during his time in Islamabad.
Sayid Akbar Agha, a former Taliban member who maintains contact with the group, also confirmed the meeting. Gen. Austin Miller, the commander of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan, was in Islamabad at the time of the meeting, Agha said, but it was unclear whether he attended.
Col. Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said he would not comment on Miller’s travels.
Khalilzad arrived Wednesday in Pakistan to meet with Pakistani officials there, who, along with the Taliban, have urged Washington to restart negotiations to end the 18-year-old war.
Khalilzad has been meeting with senior government officials in what the State Department described as follow-up meetings to those he held in New York during last month’s U.N. General Assembly session. At the time, he met Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been calling for a resumption of peace talks.
Over the summer, Khalilzad and Taliban negotiators, initialed a deal “in principle” after nine rounds of discussions in Doha, Qatar. It included the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and assurances from the Taliban that the country would not be a haven for terrorists.
But last month, Trump called off the deal on Twitter, pointing to an uptick in violence across Afghanistan and the death of an U.S. soldier, along with 11 other people, in a Taliban-directed suicide bombing in Kabul, the capital.
After the talks collapsed, U.S. lawmakers subpoenaed Khalilzad to appear in front of Congress to explain the administration’s strategy for bringing the war to an end.
If the peace efforts resume, it is unclear whether the two sides would reopen what was a finalized and initialed deal awaiting announcement, or focus more on preparing ground for the announcement of the agreement, which also has faced resistance from the Afghan government. One measure the two sides could take to prepare the ground for resuming the peace efforts is a mutual reduction of violence.
The U.S. diplomat’s visit to Islamabad happened to overlap with the presence of Taliban negotiators, based in Qatar, who were there for a series of meetings with Pakistani officials.
The Taliban negotiators’ meetings in Pakistan rankled some Afghan government officials, who have been mostly relegated to the sidelines of the peace talks as the Taliban have, for the most part, refused to meet with the Afghan government.
The Taliban have long used Pakistan as a sanctuary for the group’s fighters, which has frustrated U.S. officials who have called on Islamabad to do more to combat the insurgent group.
In recent weeks the Taliban had traveled to China, Russia and Iran to drum up support for a return to talks.
Soon after the Taliban delegation arrived Wednesday in Islamabad, Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, posted on Twitter that “no progress will be imminent if a peace process is not owned and led by the Afghan government.”
But on Friday in an interview, Sibghat Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry, said the ministry welcomed Pakistan’s decision. Ahmadi’s comments soon came under fire, with Sediqqi saying Saturday on Twitter that Ahmadi’s comments did not “reflect the Afghan government views; rather it’s his personal remarks.”
Footage released by the Pakistani government last week showed the Taliban co-founder, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, embracing Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and the director of the country’s intelligence services, Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed. Baradar was captured in 2010 in Karachi, Pakistan, and spent eight years in prison before he was released last year.
During the Doha talks, Khalilzad and Baradar held one-on-one meetings
In Afghanistan, the country is still awaiting the results of presidential polls held Sept. 28.
The leading contenders are Ghani and his current partner in the unity government, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.
Abdullah has already said he believes he has won, while Ghani’s supporters are declaring he has the necessary votes, causing many to fear political chaos. Preliminary results are not expected before Oct. 17 and final results until Nov. 7. If there is no clear winner with 51% of the vote, a second round will be held within two weeks of the final vote announcement.