Taliban expect peace deal with US in next meeting

ISLAMABAD/KABUL: The Taliban says it is hopeful an agreement will be reached with the United States to end the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan when the two adversaries meet later this week in Qatar for a crucial round of peace negotiations.

The two sides have worked hard for nearly one year and almost drafted a text in which “we have addressed all major issues,” Suhail Shaheen, who speaks for the Taliban negotiating team, told VOA.

Taliban negotiators have done their part and it is now up to the American side whether they have "made up their mind” and take the next step of winding up the dialogue process, he asserted. “We hope to reach an agreement on the troops’ withdrawal,” Shaheen said when asked for his exceptions from the upcoming meeting, though he declined to say when exactly the talks will take place.

The draft text outlines a “mutually agreed” timeline for US troops to leave the country in exchange for Taliban guarantees that “Afghan soil, particularly areas under our control” do not become a platform for transnational terrorism, Shaheen said, without sharing specific details.

He said international guarantors, possibly China, Russia, the United Nations, and neighbours of Afghanistan, including Pakistan and Iran, will witness the signing of the US-Taliban agreement.

Meanwhile, US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad is expected to arrive in Islamabad today to hold talks with the civil and military leadership before he flies off to Doha where hopefully an agreement with the Taliban is expected to take place.

Khalilzad in a series of Tweets says that his recent visit to Afghanistan has been the “most productive” since he took up this office and “The US and Afghanistan have agreed on next steps and a negotiating team and technical support group are being finalised”.

There has been no official announcement of Khalilzad’s arrival but he himself Tweeted that, “I’m off to Doha, with a stop in Islamabad. In Doha, if the Taliban do their part, we will do ours, and conclude the agreement we have been working on.”

There are also reports that the announcement that Prime Minister Imran Khan had made in Washington about the release of an American and Australian hostage have borne fruit and after Pakistan’s intervention these foreigners are about to be set free.

US President Donald Trump has indicated he intends to wind down the longest US foreign military intervention, costing Washington an estimated nearly one trillion dollars and more than 2,400 lives of American military personnel.

Once the agreement between the United States and the Taliban is inked, it will require the insurgents to immediately enter into negotiations with Afghan stakeholders.

Afghan President AshrafGhani’s government has repeatedly said it would have the lead role in conducting the inter-Afghan talks, prompting the Taliban to quickly deny those assertions.

Khalilzad, however, intervened on Saturday to end the confusion by publicly explaining who would be sitting on the negotiating table when intra-Afghan negotiations begin. “They will take place between the Taliban and an inclusive and effective national negotiating team consisting of senior government officials, key political party representatives, civil society and women,” the Afghan-born US envoy tweeted.

Neighbouring Pakistan, meanwhile, is increasingly taking the center stage in the Afghan peace process for arranging the US-Taliban dialogue and vowing to intensify its role to help bring the process to the logical conclusion.

Meanwhile, the Afghan government named a team on Wednesday to negotiate directly with the Taliban, in the expectation that Washington was on the cusp of agreeing to withdraw troops after 18 years of war, meeting the insurgents’ precondition for talks with Kabul.

Afghanistan’s ministry of peace appointed a 15-member delegation on Wednesday to negotiate with the Taliban. An official at the ministry said Norway could be the venue for intra-Afghan talks.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said some senior members of its negotiating team were traveling to the Indonesian capital Jakarta, and talks with US officials would resume after they returned to Doha. “I can’t say when the talks with the United States will start,” he said.

Many Afghans fear a US troop withdrawal announcement will weaken their bargaining power with the hardline Islamist group, which aims to re-establish an Islamic emirate to replace an elected government it dismisses as puppets of foreign forces.

Women’s rights groups in particular worry about the fate of women and girls in the event of a return of the Taliban, who banned girls’ education and imposed severe restrictions on women’s rights to work outside the home.