In his visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving, President Trump announced the United States was talking to the Taliban again in an effort to secure a ceasefire that would allow for the withdrawal of some U.S. troops and for peace talks to begin with the Afghan government.
At the time, the Taliban and Afghan officials professed ignorance of any new initiatives, but now the job falls to Zalmay Khalilzad, the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, to make it so.
Khalilzad was in Kabul Wednesday for consultations with the Afghan government before heading to Doha, Qatar, to restart the talks that Trump declared “dead” in September after the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack in the Afghan capital that killed 12 people, including a U.S. soldier.
“Khalilzad will meet with Afghan government representatives and other Afghan leaders to follow up on President Trump’s recent visit and to discuss how best to support accelerated efforts to get all parties to intra-Afghan negotiations,” the State Department said in a statement. “In Doha, Ambassador Khalilzad will rejoin talks with the Taliban to discuss steps that could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire.”
“The Taliban wants to make a deal,” Trump asserted during a brief meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the Bagram Air Field last month.
“We’re meeting with them, and we’re saying it has to be a ceasefire. They didn’t want to do a ceasefire, but now they do want to do a ceasefire, I believe,” Trump said. “It will probably work out that way. And we’ll see what happens. But we’ve made tremendous progress.”
Read more from our senior writer on defense and national security in today’s edition of Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense.“
