US Relaunches Peace Talks with Afghan Taliban

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peaceAyaz Gul
VOA News
December 7, 2019

ISLAMABAD – The United States and the Taliban restarted peace negotiations Saturday, three months after President Donald Trump abruptly stopped the yearlong process aimed at finding a political settlement with the insurgent group and ending the war in Afghanistan.

The Afghan-born U.S. special reconciliation representative, Zalmay Khalilzad, led his team at Saturday’s meeting in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where insurgent negotiators are based, a U.S. source told VOA.

“The U.S. rejoined talks today in Doha. The focus of discussion will be reduction of violence that leads to intra-Afghan negotiations and a cease-fire,” said the U.S. source.

A Taliban spokesman tweeted at the conclusion of the meeting that the two sides will reconvene on Sunday to continue the discussions.

“The talks started from where they were stopped. We discussed the signing of the agreement and related matters,” said Suhail Shaheen. He shared no further details.

The Qatari government played host to the U.S.-Taliban dialogue before it was halted by Trump on September 7 in retaliation for an insurgent attack in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that killed an American solider among others.

Terms of a possible deal

The disruption in the talks had come at a crucial stage when both sides were believed to have come close to concluding an agreement that could have set the stage for a phased withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan.

In return, the deal would have outlined the Taliban’s counterterrorism guarantees in insurgent-controlled Afghan areas and given assurances the rebels would immediately engage in intra-Afghan negotiations for permanently ending decades of hostilities in the country.

The Taliban says its fighters also would have observed a cease-fire with foreign troops in areas of troop withdrawal. However, the Taliban insist matters related to cessation of hostilities with Afghan security forces would only be on the agenda when Taliban-Afghan negotiations are launched. The insurgents are reluctant to observe a nationwide cease-fire, fearing it would undermine their military leverage.

Analysts are skeptical whether Khalilzad and his team would be able to overcome the challenges.

General urges caution

Gen John Nicholson, a former commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, on Friday cautioned against entering into a deal with the Taliban that does not bind the insurgents to cease nationwide hostilities or reduce the level of violence. The retired four-star general, who headed the military coalition until September 2018,  spoke at a luncheon hosted by the Meridian International Center, a non-partisan, public diplomacy organization in Washington.

“The cease-fire on the part of the Taliban, as some of them have said publicly, reduces their leverage. Well, a troop withdrawal on the part of the coalition reduces our military leverage,” Nicholson noted.

“To simply negotiate a deal that allows for the withdrawal of international forces and some sort of renunciation of terrorism, in my view, will not last. And therefore it would not protect our security interest nor will it protect the gains that need to be preserved inside Afghanistan,” the general  said.

Nicholson insisted in some U.S. public discourse about the cost of Afghan war the costs are inflated. He said the true cost of the Afghan war for the United States is less. “We were spending about $25 billion a year inside the country when we had less than 14,000 troops, where as the number you see talked about in terms of cost today are more than double that.”

Nicholson said the presence of a U.S. counterterrorism mission in post-withdrawal Afghanistan must also be part of the negotiations with the Taliban to deter future terrorist attacks on America.

Afghanistan’s Investigative Journalists

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Etilaat_RozThe Diplomat:  Daily newspaper Etilaat Roz makes an impact in the chaotic Afghan democracy. Etilaat Roz, or Daily Information, has established itself as a torchbearer investigative newspaper in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The daily hunts corruption, stirring what’s increasingly becoming a chaotic Afghan democracy, which suffers from ethnic frictions, messy elections, and insurgency. Click here to read more (external link).

The war on drugs in Afghanistan ‘has just been a total failure,’ the US’s top watchdog there says

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John Sopko

John Sopko

Insider:  The US-led war in Afghanistan turned 18 in October, and those two decades of fighting and rebuilding appear to have yielded little progress. The counternarcotics effort there, for example, “has just been a total failure,” John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, in November. Click here to read more (external link).

Hekmatyar Demands a ‘Full Recount’ of Votes

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Hekmatyar

Hekmatyar

Tolo News: Presidential candidate Gulbuddin Hekmatyar at a rally in Kabul on Friday recommended a full recount of votes amid uncertainty around the election results, which have been delayed for more than two months. The rally was the first for his party since the presidential election was held on Sept. 28. Hekmatyar said they demand a re-vote in polling stations where devices are lost, a recount of all votes, an announcement of results after filtering out “fraudulent” votes, and the establishment of interim government if election goes to a second round. Click here to read more (external link).

Related

Deadly Clashes Erupt in Volatile Northern Afghan Province

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kunduzAyaz Gul
VOA News
December 6, 2019

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – New clashes between government security forces and the Taliban in northern Afghanistan are said to have killed around 20 combatants on both sides.

The predawn fighting in Kunduz province erupted after insurgents assaulted several Afghan police outposts in the volatile Imam Sahib district.

A provincial police spokesman, Inamuddin Rahmani, told VOA the clashes left at least nine police personnel, including a local commander, dead and several others injured. He said 11 assailants were also killed.

For its part the Taliban claimed in a statement that the raid killed 14 among the government forces and overran the security posts. It did not give insurgent casualties.

It was not possible to verify either claim from independent sources in a province that has been the site of intense fighting for years. The Taliban twice captured, though briefly, the provincial capital, also known as Kunduz.

The latest fighting comes as the United States is preparing to relaunch its peace negotiations with the Taliban, possibly next week, nearly three months after President Donald Trump abruptly halted the process.

U.S. chief negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, is currently visiting the Afghan capital of Kabul, where he is holding meetings with politicians inside and outside of the government before heading to Doha, Qatar, where Taliban negotiators are based.

“In Doha, Ambassador Khalilzad will rejoin talks with the Taliban to discuss steps that could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire,” a State Department announcement said.

The Gulf nation played host to the yearlong U.S.-Taliban dialogue before it was  called off by Trump on September 7, when the process had entered a decisive stage, say Taliban officials. Trump had cited intensification in deadly insurgent attacks in Kabul that also killed, among others, an American soldier.

The two foes in the 18-year war, America’s longest, had come close to concluding an agreement that would have set the stage for a phased withdrawal of U.S and NATO forces. In return, the Taliban would have immediately observed a ceasefire in areas of troop withdrawal and given counterterrorism assurances, The insurgent group would have also been required to launch intra-Afghan negotiations to discuss a permanent ceasefire across Afghanistan among other political issues.

Related

US envoy to resume peace talks with Taliban in Qatar: State Department

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Khalilzad

Khalilzad

Press TV
December 5, 2019

The US says its special representative for Afghanistan is set to restart talks with the Taliban militant group, a week after President Donald Trump paid a surprise visit to the war-torn country and hinted at a resumption of the negotiations in Qatar.

US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad arrived in the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday to discuss suggestions for the resumption of peace negotiations with the militant group, according to a State Department statement.

He met with Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani and other Afghan leaders to follow up on Trump’s November 28 top-secret visit to US troops in the East Asian state, where the American president claimed Taliban wanted to “make a deal.” In Kabul, Trump also supported “accelerated efforts to get all parties to intra-Afghan negotiations.”

The Taliban initially said it was “too early” to speak of resuming the talks, but later said they “were ready” to rejoin the diplomatic process with the US in Qatar.

In Kabul, Khalilzad and Ghani exchanged views on the peace process, including “the prospect for a ceasefire as a result of a peace agreement and the issue of Taliban’s sanctuaries outside Afghanistan,” Afghanistan’s presidency office tweeted.

The US president ended yearlong talks with the Taliban in September, when an agreement appeared imminent. He said at the time that the decision to end the talks was in response to a deadly bomb attack by the militants that killed 12 people in the Afghan capital on September 5, including an American soldier.

According to a statement by the US State Department on Wednesday, Khalilzad will then fly to Doha, where the militant group maintains a political office, and “rejoin talks with the Taliban to discuss steps that could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire.”

The Ghani administration had been kept out of those talks. The Taliban have been saying they do not recognize the Kabul government, calling it a puppet of the US.

Trump’s unexpected visit to Afghanistan came after the release of two Western hostages by the Taliban last month as part of a swap deal with the Afghan government.

Ghani has proposed an initiative of his own to open direct talks between Kabul and the militant group, which still control large swathes of territory.

The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and overthrew a Taliban regime in power at the time, vowing to bring stability to the war-ravaged nation.

However, US forces have remained bogged down there through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump.

More than 14,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan and Trump has repeatedly expressed his frustration with their continued deployment.

Afghanistan needs billions of dollars in aid even after peace deal: World Bank

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worldbank_logo1TV: Despite 18 years of American and NATO military presence marked by funnelling of billions of dollars, Afghanistan’s economy remains highly dependent on foreign aid. The country’s public expenditure is $11 billion annually while revenues stand at $2.5 billion, according to officials cited by the New York Times. The difference of about 75 percent of expenses is footed by foreign governments particularly the United States. Click here to read more (external link).

Lawyer Says Afghan Courts Should Prosecute War Criminals, Not ICC

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icc_logoRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
December 5, 2019

A lawyer representing Afghanistan has told the International Criminal Court (ICC) judges that the country opposes a proposed international investigation into possible war crimes and other abuses committed during the Afghan conflict, saying its own courts should be allowed to prosecute war criminals.

Lawyer Rodney Dixon spoke on December 5, the second day of a three-day hearing into the ICC prosecution office’s appeal against an earlier decision to reject a request to open a probe into crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban, Afghan security forces, and the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.

Dixon told the ICC’s Appeals Chamber in The Hague that Afghanistan had set up an international crimes unit to prosecute cases involving militants and Afghan security forces in domestic courts, adding that the ICC could help the country to carry out local prosecutions and act as a “backstop,” if necessary.

In April, pretrial-chamber judges unanimously turned down a 2017 request made by ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to proceed with a probe into crimes allegedly committed since May 2003.

In a ruling condemned by victims and rights groups, the judges said that an inquiry “would not serve the interests of justice” because it would likely fail due to lack of cooperation.

Speaking at the December 5 hearing, prosecution lawyer Helen Brady said that the judges who rejected Bensouda’s request overstepped their powers and “gave inadequate consideration to the gravity of crimes and interests of victims.”

On December 4, Fergal Gaynor, a lawyer representing 82 alleged Afghan victims, told the five-judge panel that the ICC was “the only jurisdiction in the world…that can offer the victims a prompt and impartial investigation into the brutal crimes committed against them.”

Even if the proposed international investigation were to go ahead and prosecutors indicted Americans, it is very unlikely that they would ever appear in court.

The United States is among dozens of countries that have not ratified the Rome Treaty that established the ICC in 2002 and refuses to cooperate with the court.

Washington has said it would revoke or deny visas to ICC staff seeking to investigate the allegations of abuses.

U.S. forces and other foreign troops intervened in Afghanistan 18 years ago following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and overthrew the Taliban government.

There are roughly 13,000 U.S. troops in the country, as well as European forces participating in the NATO-led Resolute Support mission.

More than 32,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict, according to the United Nations.

With reporting by AP

Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.