Rival Afghans including the Taliban will meet coming Sunday in Qatar in a fresh attempt to seek a political solution and end nearly two decades of US military involvement, American and German officials announced.
The Taliban have refused to negotiate with President Ashraf Ghani and a previous attempt to bring together the two sides in Doha in April collapsed in a dispute over attendees.
Germany, a key player in international support for the post-Taliban government, and Qatar, which maintains contacts with the militants, said they jointly extended invitations for a dialogue in Doha on Sunday and Monday.
The Afghans “will participate only in their personal capacity and on an equal footing,” Markus Potzel, Germany’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in a statement released Monday by the United States.
“Afghanistan stands at a critical moment of opportunity for progress towards peace,” he said.
“An essential component of any process leading to this objective will be direct engagement between Afghans,” he said.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US negotiator who has held seven rounds of talks with the Taliban, mostly in Qatar, said that the dialogue was an essential part of a potential peace deal.
“Mutual acceptance, seeking consensus, and agreeing to resolve political differences without force is what is needed to learn from the tragedy of the last 40 years,” Khalilzad said, referring to Afghanistan’s nearly incessant conflict since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
“I wish participants success,” he tweeted.
This comes as Afghan politicians have already held at least two rounds of intra-Afghan dialogue with Taliban representatives in Moscow with no representation from the government side. Taliban on Monday reiterated their refusal of talks with the Kabul administration as government. Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for Taliban’s Qatar office, said in a tweet that the group will never talk to Kabul regime as government. He says even if US announces a timetable for troops pullout in presence of international witnesses, the group will only sit for talks with rival Afghan factions but not government. He added that members of Afghan government can participate in peace talks but only in their personal capacity.
