Trump: US-Taliban talks ‘dead’
Both sides blame the other for collapse of preliminary deal
WASHINGTON — U.S. peace talks with the Taliban are now “dead,” President Donald Trump declared Monday, two days after he abruptly canceled a secret meeting he had arranged with Taliban and Afghan leaders aimed at ending America’s longest war.
Trump’s remark to reporters at the White House suggested he sees no point in resuming a nearly yearlong effort to reach a political settlement with the Taliban, whose protection of al-Qaida in Afghanistan prompted the U.S. to invade after the 9/11 attacks.
Asked about the peace talks, Trump said, “They’re dead. They’re dead. As far as I’m concerned, they’re dead.”
It’s unclear whether Trump will go ahead with planned U.S. troop cuts and how the collapse of his talks will play out in Afghanistan.
“They’re dead. They’re dead. As far as I’m concerned, they’re dead.”
In his remarks to reporters, Trump said his administration is “looking at” whether to proceed with troop reductions that had been one element of the preliminary deal struck by presidential envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.
“We’d like to get out, but we’ll get out at the right time,” Trump said.
What had seemed like a potential deal to end the nearly 18-year war unraveled, with Trump and the Taliban blaming each other for the collapse of nearly a year of U.S.-Taliban negotiations in Doha, Qatar.
The insurgents are promising more bloodshed.
Afghans were wary of fresh violence in part because Trump’s announcement came shortly before a string of sensitive days in Afghanistan, including Monday’s anniversary of the killing of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Shiite Muslim holy day of Ashoura on Tuesday and Wednesday’s 9/11 anniversary.
There were no reports of any major attacks in the country, but the streets of the capital, Kabul, were empty as armed supporters of Massoud, an Afghan unifying figure killed two days before 9/11, roamed in flag-draped vehicles, firing into the air in a show of power.
Political analyst Waheed Muzhda expressed a grim outlook about the prospects for Afghanistan.
“Unfortunately, all the months of efforts came to an end with no result,” he said, “and I think the fight in Afghanistan will continue for long years.”
Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and more than 2,400 American service members have been killed since the U.S. invaded after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when they were ousted by the U.S. military for hosting Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11.
U.S. advocates of withdrawing from the battlefield questioned whether Trump’s decision to cancel what he called plans for a secret meeting with Taliban and Afghan leaders at the Camp David, Maryland, presidential retreat over the weekend had poisoned the prospects for peace.
“The Camp David ploy appears to have been an attempt to satisfy Trump’s obsession with carefully curated public spectacles — to seal the deal, largely produced by special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban negotiators, with the president’s imprimatur,” said John Glaser, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Trump has been talking of a need to withdraw U.S. troops from the “endless war” in Afghanistan since his 2016 presidential campaign.
And he said anew in a tweet Monday, “We have been serving as policemen in Afghanistan, and that was not meant to be the job of our Great Soldiers, the finest on earth.”
He added, without explanation, “Over the last four days, we have been hitting our Enemy harder than at any time in the last 10 years.”
There has been no evidence of a major U.S. military escalation.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended Trump’s weekend moves.
“When the Taliban tried to gain negotiating advantage by conducting terror attacks inside of the country, President Trump made the right decision to say that’s not going to work,” Pompeo said Sunday.
Trump said he called off negotiations because of a recent Taliban bombing in Kabul that killed a U.S. service member, even though nine other Americans have died since June 25 in Taliban-orchestrated violence.
But the emerging agreement had started unraveling days earlier after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani postponed his trip to Washington and the Taliban refused to travel to the U.S. before a deal was signed, according to a former senior Afghan official.
Ghani, seeking re-election, has been insisting that the country’s Sept. 28 election be held as scheduled and not set aside by a U.S.-Taliban deal. Trump’s decision appears to have opened the path to a vote.
Democrats said Trump’s decision to nix a deal with the Taliban was evidence that he was moving too quickly to get one. Far from guaranteeing a cease-fire, the deal only included Taliban commitments to reduce violence in Kabul and neighboring Parwan province, where the U.S. has a military base.