The top U.S. negotiator tasked with ending the war in Afghanistan held face-to-face talks for the first time Monday with the Taliban’s No. 2 official in Doha, Qatar.
The meeting between U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Mullah Baradar Akhund on Monday marks the highest level engagement between Washington and the Afghan terror group since peace negotiations began. The meeting is the clearest sign to date that the Trump White House’s initiatives to reach a political solution to the 17-year conflict is inching closer to fruition.
Mullah Baradar, who co-founded the Taliban with the group’s leader Mullah Omar, has been one of the longest surviving leaders since the beginning of the U.S. deployment shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
General exhaustion and President Trump’s oft-stated hope to bring U.S. forces home have brought a quickening of the talks, although the Taliban have refused to talk directly with the U.S.-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul, clouding prospects of a deal.
Since Mullah Omar’s death in 2013, Mullah Baradar had been at the helm of the Afghan terror group alongside then Taliban leader Mullah Mansour, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2016 and later Mullah Mansour’s successor, Mullah Fazlullah who was also killed by American warplanes last June.
Mr. Khalilzad held a working lunch with Mullah Baradar and Taliban lead negotiator Mullah Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai Monday in the Qatari capital, the senior U.S. diplomat announced on social media Monday. “Just finished a working lunch with Mullah Beradar and his team. First time we’ve met. Now moving on to talks,” Mr. Khalilzad tweeted.
During the initial meeting, Mullah Baradar “elucidated upon the importance of negotiations, authority of the [Taliban] negotiation team and the future roadmap” for peace in Afghanistan, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.
However, Mr. Mujahid made clear Mullah Baradar was attending the talks in a strictly advisory role, and that day-to-day negotiations will still be run by lower-ranked associates.
In-depth talks between the two sides are slated to begin Tuesday.
Earlier this month, Mr. Khalilzad said his team of negotiators and their Taliban counterparts agreed, in principle, to a roadmap for peace. That progress, made during marathon talks between the two sides in early February, have administration officials saying that a formal peace pact could be in place as soon as July.
“There is sufficient time where we could reach an agreement” by that month, which is when Afghanistan is slated to hold nationwide presidential elections, said the senior U.S. diplomat and Afghan native. “We want to see the war end in Afghanistan. We want the war to end this year, he added during a speech at the Washington-based U.S. Institute for Peace.
But despite the top Taliban official’s attendance at Monday’s meeting, U.S. and Taliban officials remain at odds over several issues. Critics of the Taliban talks claim the group does not want to give up its leverage over the embattled Ghani government, and have little incentive to offer concessions given a number of gains they have made on the ground in recent fighting.
U.S. negotiators continue to balk at committing to withdraw the roughly 14,000 U.S. service members currently stationed in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump’s pledge to pull 7,000 American troops from Afghanistan is undermining Mr. Khalilzad’s efforts, observers say.
The offer of a troop withdrawal “demonstrated that U.S. was serious about offers to remove troops in exchange for counterterrorism security guarantees,” said Scott Worden, director of Central Asia projects at USIP, earlier this month.
“On the other hand, withdrawal rumors [create] a perception in the region that the U.S. may be willing to withdraw even without a peace deal, [reducing] the value of that bargaining chip,” he added.
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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