ASSESSMENTS

Familiar Issues Cloud the Prospects for Afghan Peace

Feb 26, 2019 | 11:00 GMT

Participants attend the opening of two-day talks between the Taliban and Afghan opposition representatives at the President Hotel in Moscow on Feb. 5, 2019. The Taliban refuse to recognize the government in Kabul, and that's a major roadblock to peace.

(YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights

Because Washington is seeking to exit Afghanistan — one of the Taliban's main demands — their talks will proceed, but various other outstanding issues will impede greater progress.
Pakistan, the Taliban's primary external sponsor, will push the movement to remain in talks with the aim of ensuring that any U.S. withdrawal proceeds in an orderly manner. The collapse of the Afghan state would threaten Islamabad's economic and security interests.
Even though the talks might not soon produce a breakthrough, yet regional powers like Iran, India, China and Russia will all prepare for the ramifications of a U.S. withdrawal.

After 17 years of war, the United States is sitting down for talks with a militant group it overthrew in 2001. A U.S. delegation headed by special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad gathered with Taliban officials, including senior Taliban official Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Doha on Feb. 25 for the start of a fifth round of negotiations to end Afghanistan's long war. For the moment, the sides are focusing on five issues: the withdrawal of the 14,000 U.S. and 8,000 coalition troops in the country, a cease-fire, a Taliban pledge to prevent the Islamic State's Khorasan Province and al Qaeda from using Afghanistan to launch attacks, the possibility that the militant group could eventually sit down with President Ashraf Ghani's administration, as well as the Taliban's demand that the U.N. Security Council lift sanctions against them. An immediate breakthrough in talks to end decades of conflict might not be in the offing,...

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