Peace talks stifled as Taliban object to Afghan delegation

DOHA, Qatar — A peace conference in Qatar that was intended to bring Taliban negotiators and Afghan government officials together was postponed indefinitely Thursday after the insurgents objected to the large number of Afghan officials included in the country’s delegation.

It was a setback to U.S. efforts to end the long war in Afghanistan, with no progress achieved on a formula for how power would be shared following an American withdrawal even though U.S. diplomats and Taliban negotiators have neared a deal in talks that have excluded the Afghan government.

The two-day conference, scheduled to begin Saturday, was seen as an effort to bring the Taliban closer to meeting with the Afghan government and to pave the way for direct negotiations. The Afghan officials were expected to arrive as part of a delegation of nearly 200 people representing a cross-section of society.

Despite last-minute diplomatic efforts to save the conference after disagreements over the list surfaced, the organizer said late Thursday that the event, already delayed a couple of times, was now postponed with no future date set.

“Despite tireless and well-intentioned efforts of all parties, a shared understanding on how to achieve inclusivity couldn’t be reached,” said Sultan Barakat, the director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha, which was the host of the event on behalf of the Qatar government. “All parties are working to resolve differences over the size and makeup of the delegation to visit Doha.”

The last-minute breakdown was sudden. Dozens of Afghan officials who had gone to bed expecting to fly to Qatar on Thursday woke instead to “final” lists of the meeting’s participants in local news media. Those lists, which were leaked by individuals close to the Taliban, did not include the Afghan officials’ names. That was followed by phone calls telling them that the delegation’s flight to Qatar was off.

Early Thursday, Afghan officials made clear to the Qatari government they would not accept changes to their list of about 200 participants, which emerged from a protracted internal selection process; the Taliban continued refusing to meet with that group.

“They asked us to prepare our bags and passports for a flight at 12 p.m. on Thursday, which is today,” said Sediqullah Tawhidi, a member of the Afghan delegation. “This morning we received a call from the palace again, and they told us that the flight was canceled and that they will let us know later.”

Messy disagreements over the past couple of weeks have brought to light divisions among Afghanistan’s political elite about who should lead talks with the Taliban.

After several rounds of talks, the Taliban and U.S. negotiators seem to be near a deal on major issues, including the withdrawal of U.S. troops and a Taliban guarantee that international terrorist groups will not be allowed on Afghan soil. But that progress cannot be finalized until Afghans negotiate a political future for the country after the U.S. withdrawal.

After the latest round of talks with Americans last month, the Taliban had quietly agreed to the participation, in a private capacity, of some government officials in the conference this weekend. But they regarded the final list of participants as essentially a government delegation, according to Taliban representatives and Western diplomats. It did not help that the office of Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, in announcing the list Tuesday, called it “the delegation of the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.”

Soon after the list’s release, the Taliban’s main spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a statement that the Qatari hosts had made it clear “both in written and verbal form” that no one at the conference would be representing the government, and that any official who was there would be participating in a personal capacity.