Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley met with top Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday in an effort to revive a Feb. 29 peace agreement that promised reduced violence and a pathway to peace nearly 20 years after U.S. troops first arrived in the region.
“The Chairman discussed the need for an immediate reduction of violence and accelerate progress towards a negotiated political solution,” read a statement by spokeswoman Cmdr. Sarah Flaherty.
The meeting comes just weeks after Trump ordered nearly all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, even as violence has spiked in recent months. The decision roiled NATO allies, who have been part of the fight since 2001.
President Trump’s hopes to truly end the war in Afghanistan rest on trusting the divisive group that first dragged America into Afghanistan.
Trump reportedly sacked his previous defense secretary, Mark Esper, partly over Esper’s warning that troops should not be reduced below 4,500 in Afghanistan.
Trump wants U.S. troops down to 2,500 by Jan. 15, 2021.
Milley also met this week with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, the man who would have to make peace with the Taliban for the so-called “political solution” to reach fruition and U.S. troops to depart by April 2021.
The Kabul meeting dealt with the current security environment in Afghanistan.
The United States has been called upon to save the Afghan Armed Forces in recent months as the Taliban has stepped up attacks against government forces, an effort viewed as seeking leverage in the peace talks.
Milley recently reminded Americans why the U.S. first entered Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“We went to Afghanistan specifically with another reason, to ensure that Afghanistan never again became a platform for a terroristic strike against the United States,” he said at a Brookings Institution discussion on Dec. 2.
But for seven years, he said, there has been a strategic stalemate in the effort to root out the Taliban fully.
That’s why the U.S. began to negotiate with the Taliban, inking a peace deal nearly 10 months ago.
“That’s very odious for many, many people to think that we’re going to negotiate with someone like the Taliban,” Milley said. “But that is, in fact, the most common way that insurgencies end, is through a negotiated power-sharing settlement. Those negotiations are ongoing right this minute as we speak.”
