US officials and representatives of the Afghan Taliban have begun discussing ways to revive a peace process after talks fell apart last month, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The top US envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, met international diplomatic counterparts in New York in late September and met with the Taliban in Pakistan earlier this month. The meetings touched on confidence-building measures that could include a possible prisoner swap or a reduction in violence, according to the people familiar with the discussions.
President Trump last month declared that talks with the Taliban were dead, and abruptly canceled plans to meet Taliban officials at the Camp David presidential retreat to complete an agreement hashed out during a year of bilateral talks, amid opposition from top aides and cabinet members.
At a rally in Minnesota last week, Mr. Trump appeared to signal openness to return to the table to end the 18-year-old war.
“The single greatest mistake our country made, in its history, was going into the quicksand,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re pulling people out and we’re trying to make good deals and we’re going to bring our soldiers back home.”
A reduction in violence could be modeled on the cease-fire that took place in June 2018, during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr. The Taliban then announced a three-day cease-fire, leading to extraordinary scenes in which both sides hugged in the streets, ate ice cream and wept.
Since then, the Taliban has refused to agree to any further cease-fires offered by the Afghan government.
An alternative option, a prisoner swap, could entail the release of Anas Haqqani, a high-ranking member of the Haqqani network, an affiliate of the Taliban, according to the people familiar with the discussions. In exchange, the Taliban would give up two professors, an American and an Australian, who were kidnapped on their way home from teaching at the American University of Afghanistan in 2016, these people said.
Mr. Haqqani is the son of the movement’s late founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, who worked with the Central Intelligence Agency asset in the war against the Soviets. The Haqqani network is now a US-designated terrorist organization.
Mr. Haqqani was sentenced to death after the Afghan intelligence agency captured him in 2014, but remains in custody at a maximum-security prison run by the Afghan government. The Taliban’s current second in command, Siraj Haqqani, is his older brother.
The State Department declined to comment on any aspect of Mr. Khalilzad’s engagement with the Taliban in Pakistan, and wouldn’t confirm whether a meeting took place, but said the trip didn’t represent the start of an Afghan peace process. The Taliban said that no further changes were being made to the previous deal during the talks, and that the group stands ready to sign it.
“The agreement along with its annexes were finalized after long discussions, now they are ready to be signed,” the spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, said. “Now it is up to the US, whether they want the issue resolved through peaceful means or military means.”
The most recent prisoner swap between the US and the Taliban took place when Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was exchanged for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2014. Republican lawmakers criticized the Obama administration at the time for failing to notify Congress of the plan. US officials hoped the swap would open the door to a fully-fledged peace process, but it didn’t materialize.
Under the terms of the earlier proposed deal between the US and Taliban, the US would withdraw about 5,000 troops within 135 days after it is signed. The remaining US troops would be pulled out about another year after that. In return, the Taliban would renounce all ties to al Qaeda, a process the US is entitled to verify. There currently are about 14,500 US troops in Afghanistan.
Mr. Khalilzad’s meeting last week with the Taliban’s Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the top representative for the group in the talks, was the first meeting in close to a month since Mr. Trump called off the deal in September. During the hiatus, voters in Afghanistan went to the polls to decide on the country’s future president.
President Ashraf Ghani, the incumbent, is seeking a second term. Slightly more than two million Afghans voted in presidential elections last month, a historic low. The election results aren’t expected for weeks.
Mr. Ghani’s credentials as a corruption-fighter were dealt a blow last month after the US said it was cutting $60 million in aid due to the Afghan government’s failure to meet transparency and accountability benchmarks. The US also said it was returning $100 million to the US treasury for an energy project because of the Afghan government’s inability to transparently manage resources.
Mr. Ghani’s supporters say the government has made significant progress in the fight against corruption during his term.
Rick Olson, a former US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Mr. Trump’s declaration that the talks dead was “rhetorical overkill”.
“The structural conditions—a deteriorating stalemate—have not changed, so both sides need to talk,” Mr. Olson said.
