The US Envoy for Afghan Peace and Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has restarted his shuttle diplomacy to push the peace process forward. After renewed talks with the Afghan Taliban in Doha, Qatar, Zalmay Khalilzad arrived in Islamabad on January 31, 2020. Here he met Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Shah Mehmood Qureshi warned the US that the historic peace opportunity could be lost if the US did not act fast to clinch a deal. He argued that spoilers could exploit the fluid status quo. He emphasised that there was no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and if a political solution has to be achieved, the progress made so far towards a political settlement in the talks between the US and the Taliban over the past year needs to be consolidated and not frittered away. Zalmay Khalilzad, according to our Foreign Office, updated Shah Mehmood Qureshi on the developments in negotiations with the Taliban and other related issues. No further details have been made available. The US and the Taliban had restarted their talks about two weeks ago after the hiccups regarding attacks on the US forces in Kabul and Bagram provoked US President Donald Trump to slam the door shut. The renewed talks are described in media reports as 'informal', meaning thereby that nothing concrete is expected from them as an outcome for the moment, although both sides claim progress. However, the much touted and desired 'deal' remains elusive. The Taliban's offer of reduced violence in response to US demands did not satisfy Washington as to its scope. Media reports describe the Taliban offer as being for a short ceasefire to allow the signing of the deal, which reflects their upper hand on the battlefield, whereas the US may be holding out for a longer if not permanent ceasefire to create the necessary conditions for an agreement on the pullout. The issue of an intra-Afghan dialogue is still hanging fire as the Taliban view the Ashraf Ghani government as a 'US puppet'. After his talks in Islamabad, Zalmay Khalilzad flew to Kabul for discussions with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
Currently, the talks hinge centrally on conditions, particularly the question of a reduction in violence. Unfortunately, the facts on the ground appear to point in the opposite direction. Although attacks in Kabul and the major cities have abated of late, fighting in the rural areas has intensified. In 2019, the Taliban carried out 8,204 attacks, compared to 6,974 in 2018. The trajectory of the intensification or abatement of the attacks seems to follow the ups and downs in the talks process. Fighting while talking appears therefore to have been mastered as an effective tactic by the Taliban. As Shah Mehmood Qureshi too has said after his meeting with Zalmay Khalilzad, a lot depends on the reduction of the level of violence, which has by now acquired the status of the main challenge and prerequisite. The fear of course remains that the longer the negotiations are prolonged, the greater the risk of the talks' derailment. A single major attack on US forces could bring the whole process to a grinding halt. The crash of a US military plane in Afghanistan in recent days, claimed by the Taliban as having been shot down by them, has heightened such concerns. Although Zalmay Khalilzad received assurances from both Shah Mehmood Qureshi and General Bajwa that Pakistan would continue to back the peace efforts, there still lies many a slip between the cup and the lip. And even if some agreement is hammered out between the US and the Taliban that leads to the withdrawal of US forces from Washington's longest running war abroad, the post-withdrawal scenario is still clouded in uncertainty, not the least because the intra-Afghan dialogue has yet to get off the ground. Shah Mehmood Qureshi's anxiety about striking a peace deal while the iron is hot and spoilers have not yet managed to play their part is matched by the pressure of the upcoming US presidential elections. Naturally, President Donald Trump would like to enter the electoral fray having fulfilled his promise to end US entanglement in the Afghan quagmire, but whether fortune will smile on him in this regard still remains to be seen.
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