Taliban confirms Afghan peace deal 'finalized,' will be signed this month
By Don Jacobson UPI
Afghan security officials patrol in an operation against the Taliban militants in the Helmand district of Afghanistan on February 1. Photo by Watan Yar/EPA-EF
Feb. 17 (UPI) -- The Taliban on Monday officially acknowledged it has reached an agreement with the United States to reduce violence in Afghanistan and said the deal would be signed by the end of February.
Deputy chief Taliban negotiator Mawlawi Abdul Salam Hanafi made the announcement in a recorded interview published on a pro-Taliban website.
In the video, Hanafi said "both sides have agreed to sign the agreement by the end of this month," after making a "favorable environment before signing of the agreement."
The statement marked the Taliban's first public acknowledgement of the agreement in principal announced by the United States on Thursday calling for a seven-day reduction in violence in Afghanistan.
RELATED U.S. soldier dies at Afghanistan's Bagram Airfield
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that in addition to negotiating with the Taliban, he has been consulting with allies about the proposal at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
While far short of the complete cease-fire sought by the Afghan government, such a commitment would represent a key development in the talks that are ultimately aimed at removing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, where they have been stationed since late 2001.
U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief negotiator with the Taliban, said Sunday he was "cautiously optimistic" the agreement could lead to a more lasting peace in Afghanistan.
RELATED Mark Esper: U.S., Taliban have negotiated seven-day reduction of violence
"But I am realistic enough to know that there are lots of challenges ahead," he added.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah also described the peace agreement as "finalized" Monday at a meeting of the country's Council of Ministers.
"The agreement between the Taliban and U.S. has been finalized, and the signing of the agreement is based on the reduction in violence over seven days, and then it will continue," Abdullah said. "It also an opportunity for the opposite side to show that they want peace in the country."
Taliban Claims to Have Finalized Peace Deal With the U.S.
A Taliban spokesperson has claimed that the organization has finalized a peace deal with the U.S. to end more than 18 years of war.
© Alejandro Licea/U.S. Army/Handout via REUTERS A U.S. soldier assigned to the Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 1st Armored Division watches as a UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopter prepares to land during an advise and assistance mission in southeastern Afghanistan, August 4, 2019.
Courtesy Alejandro Licea/U.S. Army/uhail Shaheen told Afghan television station 1TV on Monday that the two parties had reached an agreement and suggested the deal would be signed by the end of February. Newsweek has contacted the State Department to confirm Shaheen's report.
Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah confirmed to the TOLOnews channel that a deal had been agreed, though noted that whether it is signed will depend on the success of a proposed period of reduced violence.
"The agreement between the Taliban and U.S. has been finalized and the signing of the agreement is based on the reduction in violence over seven days and then it will continue," Abdullah explained. "It is also an opportunity for the opposite side to show that they want peace in the country."
The U.S. has been negotiating an end to the country's longest running war since July 2018. A deal seemed close at hand in September 2019, and President Donald Trump had even reportedly organized a secret summit with Taliban leaders at Camp David. But negotiations collapsed again after the Taliban took credit for the death of a U.S. soldier.
Trump declared the peace process "dead" after that failure, but negotiations have continued led by U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.
This weekend, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said the U.S. plan for reduced violence is the first step in any lasting peace deal.
"There is a reduction in violence period, and then we have to consider whether or not to move forward with the agreement, with the peace agreement," he told reporters in Munich, Germany.
He added that the U.S. also plans to cut troop numbers to around 8,600 from the current level of between 12,000 and 13,000. Nonetheless, Esper explained that these steps remain "conditions based."
Over the weekend, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani warned that his government would evaluate any deal practically, and warned that the Taliban could be using a "Trojan Horse strategy" to undermine U.S. and government forces. Still, Ghani said his administration would "take a substantial step forward" and give the deal a chance to succeed.
The Taliban have thus far refused to negotiate directly with the Afghan government, dismissing it as a puppet administration controlled by Washington. An eventual peace deal may see the ultra-conservative Taliban re-enter Afghan politics, a development feared by civil and women's rights campaigners, who were brutally repressed under the group's rule from 1996 to 2001.
US negotiates its own exit from AfghanistanAfghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah confirmed to the TOLOnews channel that a deal had been agreed, though noted that whether it is signed will depend on the success of a proposed period of reduced violence.
"The agreement between the Taliban and U.S. has been finalized and the signing of the agreement is based on the reduction in violence over seven days and then it will continue," Abdullah explained. "It is also an opportunity for the opposite side to show that they want peace in the country."
The U.S. has been negotiating an end to the country's longest running war since July 2018. A deal seemed close at hand in September 2019, and President Donald Trump had even reportedly organized a secret summit with Taliban leaders at Camp David. But negotiations collapsed again after the Taliban took credit for the death of a U.S. soldier.
Trump declared the peace process "dead" after that failure, but negotiations have continued led by U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.
This weekend, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said the U.S. plan for reduced violence is the first step in any lasting peace deal.
"There is a reduction in violence period, and then we have to consider whether or not to move forward with the agreement, with the peace agreement," he told reporters in Munich, Germany.
He added that the U.S. also plans to cut troop numbers to around 8,600 from the current level of between 12,000 and 13,000. Nonetheless, Esper explained that these steps remain "conditions based."
Over the weekend, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani warned that his government would evaluate any deal practically, and warned that the Taliban could be using a "Trojan Horse strategy" to undermine U.S. and government forces. Still, Ghani said his administration would "take a substantial step forward" and give the deal a chance to succeed.
The Taliban have thus far refused to negotiate directly with the Afghan government, dismissing it as a puppet administration controlled by Washington. An eventual peace deal may see the ultra-conservative Taliban re-enter Afghan politics, a development feared by civil and women's rights campaigners, who were brutally repressed under the group's rule from 1996 to 2001.
A Soviet soldier waves on his way back to the USSR along
a north Afghanistan highway on Feb. 7, 1989. (AP)
Updated 16 February 2020 AP
Taliban, Washington agreed on Friday to a temporary truce
KABUL: Afghanistan on Saturday marked the 31st anniversary of the last Soviet soldier leaving the country. This year’s anniversary came as the US negotiates its own exit after 18 years of war, America’s longest.
Some of the same Afghan insurgent leaders who drove out the former Soviet Union have been fighting the US, and have had prominent seats at the negotiating table during yearlong talks with Washington’s peace envoy.
Moscow pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, a decade after invading the country to support an allied communist government. Afghan mujahideen, or holy warriors, received weapons and training from the US throughout the 1980s to fight the Red Army. Some of those mujahideen went on to form the Taliban.
The US and the Taliban agreed on Friday to a temporary truce. If successful, it could open the way for another historic withdrawal that would see all American troops leave the country.
The chief negotiator for the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was once an American ally against the Soviets. So was another Taliban negotiator, Khairullah Khairkhwa. He spent 12 years detained at Guantanamo Bay until his release in 2014 in exchange for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
The Taliban are now at their strongest since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan ousted them from power.
Kabul’s streets were quiet on Saturday, normally the busy start of the Afghan workweek. There were no official public celebrations marking the anniversary, and most people took the holiday off.
Shakeb Rohin was only seven years old when the Soviets pulled out. Now a graduate of Kabul University’s economics department, he said he can’t remember the Soviet occupation. Since then, he said he’s witnessed only war.
“We are so tried of war, we want a peaceful solution for Afghanistan’s problems,” he said.
Abdul Shakor Ahmadi, 56, recalled how people were very happy on the day of the pullout. But he said the civil war that followed was worse.
With the Cold War over, the US lost interest in Afghanistan. The mujahideen government — which included many of the warlords in Kabul today — eventually turned their guns on each other in the early 1990s.
The fighting killed tens of thousands of civilians. It also led some former mujahideen to regroup into the Taliban, who rose to power in 1996.
“I hope peace comes this time,” Ahmadi said. “At least once in our lifetime we would be able to see peace in our country. We’re so worried about the future of our children.”
The US and Taliban take a first step toward a peace deal in Afghanistan
A seven-day reduction in violence will be the first test of whether a formal deal is possible.
By Jen Kirbyjen.kirby@vox.com Feb 14, 2020
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66316921/1200511548.jpg.0.jpg)
Updated 16 February 2020 AP
Taliban, Washington agreed on Friday to a temporary truce
KABUL: Afghanistan on Saturday marked the 31st anniversary of the last Soviet soldier leaving the country. This year’s anniversary came as the US negotiates its own exit after 18 years of war, America’s longest.
Some of the same Afghan insurgent leaders who drove out the former Soviet Union have been fighting the US, and have had prominent seats at the negotiating table during yearlong talks with Washington’s peace envoy.
Moscow pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, a decade after invading the country to support an allied communist government. Afghan mujahideen, or holy warriors, received weapons and training from the US throughout the 1980s to fight the Red Army. Some of those mujahideen went on to form the Taliban.
The US and the Taliban agreed on Friday to a temporary truce. If successful, it could open the way for another historic withdrawal that would see all American troops leave the country.
The chief negotiator for the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was once an American ally against the Soviets. So was another Taliban negotiator, Khairullah Khairkhwa. He spent 12 years detained at Guantanamo Bay until his release in 2014 in exchange for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
The Taliban are now at their strongest since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan ousted them from power.
Kabul’s streets were quiet on Saturday, normally the busy start of the Afghan workweek. There were no official public celebrations marking the anniversary, and most people took the holiday off.
Shakeb Rohin was only seven years old when the Soviets pulled out. Now a graduate of Kabul University’s economics department, he said he can’t remember the Soviet occupation. Since then, he said he’s witnessed only war.
“We are so tried of war, we want a peaceful solution for Afghanistan’s problems,” he said.
Abdul Shakor Ahmadi, 56, recalled how people were very happy on the day of the pullout. But he said the civil war that followed was worse.
With the Cold War over, the US lost interest in Afghanistan. The mujahideen government — which included many of the warlords in Kabul today — eventually turned their guns on each other in the early 1990s.
The fighting killed tens of thousands of civilians. It also led some former mujahideen to regroup into the Taliban, who rose to power in 1996.
“I hope peace comes this time,” Ahmadi said. “At least once in our lifetime we would be able to see peace in our country. We’re so worried about the future of our children.”
The US and Taliban take a first step toward a peace deal in Afghanistan
A seven-day reduction in violence will be the first test of whether a formal deal is possible.
By Jen Kirbyjen.kirby@vox.com Feb 14, 2020
Afghan security forces at the site of a suicide attack on February 11, 2020. Xinhua/Xinhua Kabul via Getty Images
The United States and the Taliban have reached a deal that could be the start of ending America’s longest-running war.
This is not a peace agreement, but rather something of a pre-agreement. The US and the Taliban have agreed to a seven-day “reduction in violence” pact, a US official confirmed Friday to media outlets.
It’s not clear when this deal will take effect, per NPR, or how it will be measured, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But the violence reduction deal is intended as a test of whether a more lasting ceasefire might be possible, according to a senior Afghan official. What a lasting ceasefire — specifically one between the Afghan government and the Taliban — might look like, and how it might be implemented, is much murkier.
If this reduction in violence is successful, the US and the Taliban could sign an agreement that leads to the gradual drawdown of the 12,000 US troops that remain in the country, which in turn would precipitate the Taliban and the Afghan government beginning formal negotiations on a political settlement.
“But how all it gets stitched together — if it does — isn’t clear,” James Cunningham, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former ambassador to Afghanistan, told Vox.
The US and the Taliban came close to a peace deal in 2019, which would have withdrawn US troops from the country and would have required the Taliban to publicly rescind its support for terrorist groups ties and enter into talks with the Afghan government over power-sharing. The Afghan government objected to being largely left out of these discussions and wanted a more permanent ceasefire, with conditions.
Abruptly, in September, President Trump said on Twitter that he halted peace talks after a Taliban attack in Kabul left one US service member and 11 other people dead. Trump said he had planned to fly Taliban leaders to Camp David for the signing, before he made an about-face.
But the US government and Taliban have renewed efforts to try to reach an agreement, potentially putting an end to a nearly two-decade war on Trump’s watch.
“We’ve said all along that the best, if not the only, solution in Afghanistan is a political agreement. Progress has been made on that front and we’ll have more to report on that soon, I hope,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday.
“It is our view that seven days for now is sufficient but in all things our approach to this process will be conditions based,” he added.
Trump seemed buoyed at the chances of success, saying on Geraldo Rivera’s podcast Thursday that there was a “good chance” for a deal.
Earlier this week, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had told him of “notable progress” in talks with the Taliban. “This is a welcoming development and I am pleased that our principal position on peace thus far has begun to yield fruitful results. Our primary objective is to end the senseless bloodshed,” he said.
What does this all mean for America’s longest war?
Given that there’s little appetite for putting more troops on the ground, a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and Afghan officials would likely be the best possible outcome after years of war — but it is still a long way away.
Last year, even as the US and the Taliban were trying to negotiate a deal, Afghanistan witnessed extraordinary violence, which some saw as the Taliban’s attempt to gain leverage.
The Taliban had also previously rejected a full ceasefire in Afghanistan, so this reduction of violence agreement seems to be the nearest test as to whether the Taliban is capable of sustaining a reduction in hostilities, or at least enough to pave the way for more robust negotiations to begin.
This, again, is going to be no easy feat. Last time around, the Afghan government objected to being left out of US-Taliban negotiations. And as NPR reports, the Taliban has said it wants Afghan officials to participate as citizens, since it does not formally recognize the government in Kabul.
The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for 18 years, and it still has about 12,000 troops committed there. Trump has made it clear he wants to pull troops out of the country, something two previous presidents have failed to achieve.
But the Atlantic Council’s Cunningham warns that it’s dangerous for the White House to race into a deal just to get troops out. “Americans should not want to see a rush to complete withdrawal without a political settlement,” he said.
The Trump administration, especially with the 2020 election looming, might be eager to declare victory by bringing troops home from Afghanistan and signing some sort of peace treaty with the Taliban. But success — for the US, for Afghanistan, and, most importantly, for the Afghan people — is likely going to be an uncertain and precarious process.
The United States and the Taliban have reached a deal that could be the start of ending America’s longest-running war.
This is not a peace agreement, but rather something of a pre-agreement. The US and the Taliban have agreed to a seven-day “reduction in violence” pact, a US official confirmed Friday to media outlets.
It’s not clear when this deal will take effect, per NPR, or how it will be measured, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But the violence reduction deal is intended as a test of whether a more lasting ceasefire might be possible, according to a senior Afghan official. What a lasting ceasefire — specifically one between the Afghan government and the Taliban — might look like, and how it might be implemented, is much murkier.
If this reduction in violence is successful, the US and the Taliban could sign an agreement that leads to the gradual drawdown of the 12,000 US troops that remain in the country, which in turn would precipitate the Taliban and the Afghan government beginning formal negotiations on a political settlement.
“But how all it gets stitched together — if it does — isn’t clear,” James Cunningham, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former ambassador to Afghanistan, told Vox.
The US and the Taliban came close to a peace deal in 2019, which would have withdrawn US troops from the country and would have required the Taliban to publicly rescind its support for terrorist groups ties and enter into talks with the Afghan government over power-sharing. The Afghan government objected to being largely left out of these discussions and wanted a more permanent ceasefire, with conditions.
Abruptly, in September, President Trump said on Twitter that he halted peace talks after a Taliban attack in Kabul left one US service member and 11 other people dead. Trump said he had planned to fly Taliban leaders to Camp David for the signing, before he made an about-face.
But the US government and Taliban have renewed efforts to try to reach an agreement, potentially putting an end to a nearly two-decade war on Trump’s watch.
“We’ve said all along that the best, if not the only, solution in Afghanistan is a political agreement. Progress has been made on that front and we’ll have more to report on that soon, I hope,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday.
“It is our view that seven days for now is sufficient but in all things our approach to this process will be conditions based,” he added.
Trump seemed buoyed at the chances of success, saying on Geraldo Rivera’s podcast Thursday that there was a “good chance” for a deal.
Earlier this week, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had told him of “notable progress” in talks with the Taliban. “This is a welcoming development and I am pleased that our principal position on peace thus far has begun to yield fruitful results. Our primary objective is to end the senseless bloodshed,” he said.
What does this all mean for America’s longest war?
Given that there’s little appetite for putting more troops on the ground, a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and Afghan officials would likely be the best possible outcome after years of war — but it is still a long way away.
Last year, even as the US and the Taliban were trying to negotiate a deal, Afghanistan witnessed extraordinary violence, which some saw as the Taliban’s attempt to gain leverage.
The Taliban had also previously rejected a full ceasefire in Afghanistan, so this reduction of violence agreement seems to be the nearest test as to whether the Taliban is capable of sustaining a reduction in hostilities, or at least enough to pave the way for more robust negotiations to begin.
This, again, is going to be no easy feat. Last time around, the Afghan government objected to being left out of US-Taliban negotiations. And as NPR reports, the Taliban has said it wants Afghan officials to participate as citizens, since it does not formally recognize the government in Kabul.
The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for 18 years, and it still has about 12,000 troops committed there. Trump has made it clear he wants to pull troops out of the country, something two previous presidents have failed to achieve.
But the Atlantic Council’s Cunningham warns that it’s dangerous for the White House to race into a deal just to get troops out. “Americans should not want to see a rush to complete withdrawal without a political settlement,” he said.
The Trump administration, especially with the 2020 election looming, might be eager to declare victory by bringing troops home from Afghanistan and signing some sort of peace treaty with the Taliban. But success — for the US, for Afghanistan, and, most importantly, for the Afghan people — is likely going to be an uncertain and precarious process.
No comments:
Post a Comment