ISLAMABAD - The Taliban says it is hopeful an agreement will be reached with the United States to end the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan when the two adversaries meet later this week in Qatar for a crucial round of peace negotiations.
The two sides have worked hard for nearly one year and almost drafted a text in which “we have addressed all major issues,” Suhail Shaheen, who speaks for the Taliban negotiating team, told VOA.
Taliban negotiators have done their part and it is now up to the American side whether they have "made up their mind” and take the next step of winding up the dialogue process, he asserted.
“We hope to reach an agreement on the troops’ withdrawal,” Shaheen said when asked for his exceptions from the upcoming meeting, though he declined to say when exactly the talks will take place.
U.S chief negotiator Zalamay Khalilzad, who has been in Afghanistan for more than a week, tweeted Wednesday that he is heading to Qatar for talks with the Taliban. "In Doha, if the Taliban do their part, we will do ours and conclude the agreement we have been working on." Khalilzad added that during his stay in Kabul he worked with Afghan leaders to finalize a negotiating team for intra-Afghan talks. Khalilzad said he will stop in neighboring Pakistan before traveling to the Qatari capital.
The draft text outlines a “mutually agreed” timeline for U.S. troops to leave the country in exchange for Taliban guarantees that “Afghan soil, particularly areas under our control” do not become a platform for transnational terrorism, Shaheen said, without sharing specific details.
He said international guarantors, possibly China, Russia, the United Nations, and neighbors of Afghanistan, including Pakistan and Iran, will witness the signing of the U.S.-Taliban agreement.
U.S. President Donald Trump has indicated he intends to wind down the longest U.S. foreign military intervention, costing Washington an estimated nearly one trillion dollars and more than 2,400 lives of American military personnel.
On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said President Trump has instructed him to reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan by the 2020 election. “He (Trump) has been unambiguous: End the endless wars. Draw down. Reduce. It won’t just be us,” Pompeo noted in some of the clearest comments on the administration’s plans to terminate the war.
Once the agreement between the United States and the Taliban is inked, it will require the insurgents to immediately enter into negotiations with Afghan stakeholders.
The chief Taliban negotiator, Sher Abbas Stanikzai, earlier this month acknowledged while talking to VOA in Doha that issues such as a permanent and comprehensive cease-fire will be taken up in the intra-Afghan talks.
“We are committed that when the final agreement is signed with the Americans for the withdrawal of their troops and the timetable is given and international guarantors are witnessing the final signature, after that we will go to the inter-Afghan dialogue,” Stanikzai explained to VOA.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government has repeatedly said it would have the lead role in conducting the inter-Afghan talks, prompting the Taliban to quickly deny those assertions.
Khalilzad, however, intervened on Saturday to end the confusion by publicly explaining who would be sitting on the negotiating table when intra-Afghan negotiations begin.
“They will take place between the Taliban and an inclusive and effective national negotiating team consisting of senior government officials, key political party representatives, civil society and women,” the Afghan-born U.S. envoy tweeted.
Khalilzad’s statement was yet another major concession to the Taliban who have consistently refused to engage in direct talks with the Ghani administration, dismissing it as “illegitimate and an American puppet.”
The Afghan-born American reconciliation envoy has been in Kabul over the past week and has held at least four meetings with Ghani and talked to key Afghan opposition leaders as well as civil society leaders in his bid to push them to form a representative team for the much-awaited talks with the Taliban to help end decades of bloodshed in the country.
Neighboring Pakistan, meanwhile, is increasingly taking the center stage in the Afghan peace process for arranging the U.S.-Taliban dialogue and vowing to intensify its role to help bring the process to the logical conclusion.