U.S. troops won’t leave Afghanistan until the Afghan government and the Taliban have a ceasefire and a political plan for peace, according to a new report.
“Everything is to be implemented at the same time,” a senior administration official said, according to the Washington Post.
The official said a withdrawal of U.S. troops will only occur after the completion of several goals and total agreement on all issues has “not only has been completed, but has started to be implemented.” The official did not disclose the specific benchmarks that must be met.
Last week, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad met with the Taliban in Qatar. Khalilzad said over the weekend that discussions with the Taliban in Qatar were “more productive than they have been in the past” and that the U.S. and Taliban agreed on a draft framework that would pull out the 14,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the future, one of the Taliban’s top priorities.
The official told the Post that discussions with the Taliban included talks about barring al Qaeda and the Islamic State from Afghanistan, plans for a U.S. withdrawal, a permanent ceasefire, and how the Taliban and the Afghan government can negotiate a peace agreement.
[Opinion: No matter how Taliban peace talks go, Trump should pull troops from Afghanistan]
The U.S. official claimed the Taliban “said the last two issues were beyond the mandate of their delegation, and agreed to take those issues and what we proposed on those to their leadership, and get back to us by the next meeting” that is slated for February.
The Taliban has resisted negotiating with the Afghan government, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his advisers have grown frustrated that they have not been as involved in the negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban. Ghani is also concerned that Khalilzad would give in to the Taliban’s push for an interim government, and a senior aide to Ghani told the Post that Khalilzad has “given the Taliban everything they wanted.”
But the U.S. official rejected accusations that Khalilzad was discussing an interim government and said that the U.S. wants the Afghan government to be involved in the negotiations as soon as possible.
“We want the Afghan government and other Afghans to be at the table as soon as possible,” the official said. “The Taliban do not reject the necessity of Afghan government participation. The question is of timing and modalities.”
Meanwhile, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said Tuesday that the discussions were encouraging and that he has not been instructed to develop plans for a U.S. withdrawal at this point.
