The Taliban’s leadership council has agreed to a weeklong ceasefire, a step that could pave the way for an agreement with the US as early as next month to draw down US troops and start Afghan-to-Afghan talks on a comprehensive settlement of the 18-year Afghan war, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The council gave the go-ahead for the temporary truce during a meeting on Wednesday in the Pakistani city of Quetta, where it is based, according to a person briefed by a senior Taliban official who was present at the gathering. The Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, attended the assembly and approved the cease-fire, the person said.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the move would spur progress toward an accord with the US that would include a drawdown of the 13,000 American forces currently deployed in Afghanistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief US envoy to the Afghan peace process, had demanded a ten-day Taliban ceasefire before the signing of any deal, US and Afghan officials said.
The State Department declined to comment on the development.
The agreement by top Taliban officials to a truce represents a compromise by the insurgents and a partial victory for Khalilzad. Since the Taliban resumed direct talks with the US more than a year ago, they have refused to stop fighting, even temporarily, until Washington agrees to their core demand: the removal of all US and other foreign forces from Afghanistan.
“The US has been waiting for a positive response from the Taliban,” the person briefed by the senior Taliban official said. “Their political office in Doha now has a response from the Taliban leadership.”
It couldn’t immediately be ascertained when US and Taliban negotiators would reconvene in Qatar’s capital to discuss the proposed truce and the announcement of a withdrawal deal.
Khalilzad paused the talks earlier this month after Taliban fighters attacked a medical clinic bordering the US air base at Bagram with the apparent aim of penetrating the perimeter base and assaulting US troops and airmen.
The attack triggered a firefight with US and Afghan government forces that ended nearly 10 hours later after US airstrikes were called in. At least two Afghan civilians were killed and another 70 wounded in the fighting, Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said.
In condemning the Bagram assault, Khalilzad struck a tough tone, saying in a tweet that the Taliban “must show they are willing & able to respond to Afghan desire for peace” and adding that the pause was being taken for the Taliban to “consult their leadership on this essential topic.”
Since the resumption of direct US-Taliban talks in July 2018, both sides have pursued a “fight-and-talk” strategy, with the US Air Force, for instance, dropping more munitions in Afghanistan in September than in any month since January 2013.
But the strategy appeared to hit a limit that month when President Trump broke off US-Taliban talks with an all-but-signed agreement in hand, after a series of high-profile Taliban attacks drew heavy condemnation from the Afghan government.
Besides a conditional withdrawal of American and other foreign forces from Afghanistan, that deal, and the one currently under negotiation in Doha, called for a Taliban commitment to police Afghanistan against transnational terrorist groups and the start of talks between the insurgents and other Afghans, including government officials, on the shape of a future government in Kabul.
In a Christmas Eve video teleconference with members of the US military, Mr. Trump praised American troops in Afghanistan, saying they have “kept the Taliban running scared.” Still, the Taliban control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since 2001, when a US-led invasion forced them from power.
