What to watch: Afghan peace talks begin
Peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are expected to begin today in Doha, Qatar, officials announced yesterday, in a historic negotiation between the two sides after nearly two decades of bitter war.
Here is where things stand.
US forces are leaving Afghanistan on schedule
The agreement reached between the US and the Taliban in February called for withdrawing all of the roughly 12,000 US troops remaining in the country over 14 months. Under the deal struck between the US and the Taliban, the US would bring home 3400 troops within 135 days of the signing of peace deal and shutter five military bases.
In return, the Taliban agreed to an effective cease-fire with the USled coalition. The insurgents said they would not attack American targets on their way out, and the US agreed to stop attacking Taliban fighters except in rare cases, in which their Afghan allies were under severe pressure.
Both sides said the terms of the first 135-day phase had been honoured, but the Taliban is anxious that the US will not fully withdraw by early next year.
Negotiations over power sharing will be complicated
As difficult as it has been to get the Taliban and the government to the negotiating table, coming to an agreement will be even more complicated.
Finding a sustainable compromise between two clashing visions of government — a strict Islamic theocracy and a democratic republic — will be no easy task, and it will be made more difficult by decades of bloodshed and grievances between the two sides. The Afghan government’s priority will be to secure a lasting cease-fire, , something the Taliban have agreed to as a first item on the agenda. But getting the insurgents to let go of violence, their main leverage, will be no easy task.
At the talks: a presidential contender, a religious scholar and five women
The negotiating team of the Afghan republic consists of a mix of government officials and opposition figures, overseen by perennial presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah.
The team includes five women among its 21 members, including Fawzia Koofi, a former member of parliament who recently survived an assassination attempt and will be arriving at the table with her hand in a cast. Masoom Stanekzai, the chief negotiator, has been a longtime confidant of President Ashraf Ghani and most recently served as Ghani’s intelligence chief.
The Taliban team will include some of the delegation that negotiated the deal with the United States, and a notable change: As chief negotiator, the insurgents have put forward Mawlawi Abdul Hakim Haqqani, a religious scholar who has led the Taliban’s network of local courts in recent years. Mawlawi Haqqani is seen as carrying deep influence within the Taliban ranks, having served as instructor to many of their leaders in Islamic seminaries.
Overseeing the process will be Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy supreme leader, who signed the US deal on behalf of the insurgents.
Both sides will bring histories of personal loss to the table. Stanekzai was wounded in a bombing that killed Afghanistan’s former top peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani. Mawlawi Haqqani lost his brother and son in an explosion targeting a mosque in the Pakistani city of Quetta, where much of the Taliban leadership operates from.
US officials are wary of Taliban promises to keep terrorists out of Afghanistan
As part of their agreement with the Americans, the Taliban committed to preventing terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a base of operations.
The mechanism for monitoring each side’s adherence to the agreement includes a joint office in
Doha. It’s unclear, however, how that office evaluates the Taliban’s ties to al-Qaida and other terror groups, but senior US military leaders have said they are not satisfied so far.
Consecutive reports to the UN Security Council by a monitoring team, including one report this month, have said that a large number of foreign fighters — including Pakistanis, Arabs and Central Asians — affiliated with alQaida and other regional terror groups still have cover in Afghanistan under the umbrella of the Taliban. The Taliban disputes those reports.
Taliban attacks on Afghan forces have been unabated
Even as direct confrontations between the US and the Taliban have decreased, the insurgents have ramped up their attacks on the Afghan government’s forces.
In the past, Afghan forces were heavily reliant on US air support, but that help has been limited since the US and the Taliban reached their deal in February.
More than 3500 Afghan troops have been killed and nearly 6800 others wounded in the five months since the two sides signed their deal, Ghani said in late July. Some officials say the death toll is much higher. In the same period, nearly 800 Afghan civilians have been reported killed and more than 1600 wounded.