This archive report was first published on 5 July 2019.
On July 5, 2019, the United States announced its intention to reach an agreement with the Taliban within two months, but a broader peace deal for Afghanistan remains elusive.
US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, believes that nothing more can be achieved from the military operation launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Kabul in late June and stated that the US is seeking a deal with the Taliban by September 1, before Afghanistan's elections, which could throw in a new element of chaos.
US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad has met seven times with the Taliban and, in a potentially major first step, the insurgents have agreed to meet a wide range of Afghans starting Sunday in Qatar.
The Taliban have steadfastly refused to negotiate with the internationally recognized government in Kabul.
Laurel Miller, who served as the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under both Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama, stated that an agreement between the US and the Taliban is not a peace agreement for Afghanistan.
“It doesn’t address the really hard questions of what role the Taliban is going to play or not play in governing Afghanistan and what happens to the current government and system of government that the United States helped set up,” Miller said.
Miller added that the apparent US breakthrough with the Taliban is simply because the Trump administration made a concession by agreeing to negotiate even though the insurgents are not talking to Kabul.
Scott Smith, deputy director of the Afghanistan program at the US Institute of Peace, stated that neither the Taliban nor Kabul has prepared much for negotiations on what the country will look like.
“I don’t think anybody has thought about that too far, and certainly not the main parties,” he said.
Michael Kugelman, deputy director for Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, stated that the example of war-torn nations such as Colombia showed it can take years if not decades to broker peace agreements.
