Three months after President Trump pulled the plug on peace talks with the Taliban in response to the group’s killing of a U.S. soldier in a suicide bombing, negotiations are back on. Ambassador Zal Khalilzad recently sat down with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, for what the White House hopes will be the beginning of a serious process that leads to a deal.

During a visit with U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving, Trump claimed that the talks were not only back on track, but that the Taliban was even open to a ceasefire. The president’s comments generated a fair degree of confusion, particularly among the Taliban leadership, which reiterated its old position: A ceasefire will only occur when a deal with Washington is signed. And if Kabul is expecting a nationwide truce between Taliban and Afghan government forces, they can keep on dreaming.