As the Taliban advance, Biden officials cling to hope for Afghan peace

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WASHINGTON – As Taliban fighters advance surprisingly fast in Afghanistan, Biden government officials continue to place their hopes on a peace deal that would end the country’s relentless violence with a power-sharing deal.

At least in their public statements they have emphasized that the peace process could succeed even if the US military withdraws from the country and critics say the talks should be declared a farce and broken off.

But now even the most encouraging US officials are increasingly publicly admitting what they previously said privately: that the prospect of a negotiation outcome that could partially save the 20-year-old American project in Afghanistan is rapidly dwindling.

President Biden’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, gave a sober assessment of what he called the “difficult situation†in the country and the huge gap between the Taliban and Afghan government negotiators.

“They are far apart,” said Khalilzad during an appearance at the annual Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday. In private, US officials are even more pessimistic.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken spoke with the second-ranking Afghan government official, Abdullah Abdullah, and “discussed ways to accelerate peace negotiations and reach a political solution,” a statement by the Foreign Ministry said.

It was the Biden administration’s recent public support for talks known as the “intra-Afghan dialogue” that began last September as part of an agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban that paved the way for the withdrawal of American forces. Meetings between Taliban leaders and Afghan government officials continue sporadically in Doha, Qatar, including a meeting in mid-July.

The prospect of a peace deal gives Biden officials something hopeful to indicate that by withdrawing troops from the land of America, they have left Afghan allies to Taliban conquest and strict theocratic rule.

But Biden officials have struggled in recent weeks to ward off fears that the group cynically exploited the peace talks to buy time and provide political cover for a US exit.

“The Taliban must stop this ongoing violence; they have to stop it, “State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Wednesday. He said the Taliban had an inherent interest in avoiding the endless civil war that would continue without a power-sharing agreement.

Price admitted, however, that the group’s increased violence – including a recent bomb attack in Kabul outside the home of the incumbent Afghan Defense Minister – had shaken confidence in such assumptions.

“The Taliban leaders continue to say one thing – that they support a negotiated solution to conflict,” Price said, adding that “those words sound hollow amid the ongoing attacks.”

Even as they storm villages and towns across the country, raising the question of whether Afghan security forces can defend large cities like the capital, Kabul, Taliban leaders insist they have a real interest in a peace deal.

Last month, Taliban leader Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada said in a statement that “despite the military achievements and advances” of his armed forces, “the Islamic emirate strongly supports a political solution in the country.” The Islamic Emirate was what the Taliban called their government when they were in power.

The statement came when Taliban officials met with Afghan government officials, including Mr Abdullah, for a round table in Doha. US officials say the meeting did little, although Mr Khalilzad tried to be optimistic afterwards.

“There is more that unites the parties than divides them” he wrote on Twitter.

However, when rockets hit near the presidential palace in Kabul after these talks were over, President Ashraf Ghani railed that the Taliban had “no intention or willingness to make peace.”

And in an address to his country’s parliament this week, Mr Ghani, who felt himself being forced to the negotiating table by the United States, complained about an “imported, hasty” peace process. “The Taliban do not believe in lasting or just peace,” he added.

Mr. Ghani has a personal interest in the talks. A sticking point was the Taliban’s demand to resign as part of the transition to a new government. Mr Ghani insists that he is the country’s legitimate elected leader.

But the group’s demands are broader. In a report on the Afghan peace process earlier this year, the nonprofit International Crisis Group stated that Afghan officials “fear that a political settlement under the current circumstances would overturn the constitutional order established over the past two decades and essentially restore the Taliban” . Energy.”

Mr Khalilzad said Tuesday that the Taliban were demanding “the lion’s share” of power in a new government – using their military gains as leverage.

“They try to influence each other’s calculations and conditions through what they do on the battlefield,” he said.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the only negotiations the Taliban are now serious about are attempts to reach unofficial deals with Afghan warlords and other power brokers to help them to peel away support from the government and organize a takeover of much or all of the country.

“The Taliban are currently not interested in negotiating seriously because of what is happening on the battlefield,” said Ms. Felbab-Brown. “What the Taliban put on the table in talks with Afghan officials in Doha are essentially conditions of surrender.”

Mr. Khalilzad, who tried to keep the peace process alive, was appointed by President Donald J. Trump and has become a rare holdover of that administration in the present – thanks in part to personal ties with Mr. Biden, to whom he came to know when Mr. Biden Senator and Mr. Khalilzad was an official in the George W. Bush administration.

In a 2016 memorandum, Mr. Khalilzad recounted Mr. Biden’s trip to Kabul in early 2002. Mr. Khalilzad, then an envoy for the country’s president, was forced to arrange a nightly tea hour so that Mr. Biden, who was in a fit of Trouble had threatened to drop a B-52 bomb on an Afghan leader could establish a connection with the man. Mr. Biden spent the night in a sleeping bag on the floor of a US Embassy conference room and waited in line for the shower the next morning, “only wearing a towel,” said Mr. Khalilzad, happily turning to look for a marine Posing in line behind that said he wanted a picture for his mother.

Today, Mr Khalilzad spends less time in Doha or Kabul than in nearby countries that the United States hopes will put pressure on the Taliban to ease their extremist stance.

But Russia and Iran recently invited Taliban officials for talks, a sign that these countries are positioning themselves to deal with the group when it needs much or all of the political power in Afghanistan.

Andrew Watkins, chief analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group, said the Biden administration, aware of many other competing interests in the region, appeared unwilling to pressure China and Russia as much as it did would be necessary to get these countries to adopt a tougher stance towards the Taliban.

Mr Watkins said it was important for US officials to keep the peace process alive, however bleak the prospect now may seem.

If the Afghan government can step up its defenses in the coming months, defend major cities like Kabul and fight the Taliban to a halt, the group could choose to return to the negotiating table, he said.

“There is absolutely still value in keeping an open channel of dialogue alive,” he said. “To let the talks collapse completely” would mean that if both sides decided that politics rather than violence would best achieve their goals, “they would start over”.


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