KABUL—The Taliban set the stage for peace talks with envoys of President Hamid Karzai and the U.S., establishing a venue and an opening to the Afghan leadership just hours after Kabul formally took over nationwide security responsibilities.
U.S. discussions with the Taliban, suspended more than a year ago, will resume in Qatar on Thursday, U.S. officials said, after the Taliban opened a political office on Tuesday in Doha, the capital of the Persian Gulf emirate, and made a gesture toward renouncing links to international terrorism.
Mr. Karzai said delegates of his negotiating team, the Afghan High Peace Council, would also soon travel to Doha for talks that aim to avert civil war once combat troops from the U.S.-led coalition go home next year.
The Taliban have until now publicly refused to negotiate with Kabul’s representatives, dismissing Mr. Karzai as an American “puppet.” On Tuesday, the insurgent group said its representatives in Doha would meet Afghans “in due appropriate time.”
President Barack Obama described the Taliban decision and Mr. Karzai’s readiness to engage in Qatar talks as “an important first step toward reconciliation, although it is a very early step.” He added: “We anticipate there will be a lot of bumps in the road.”
The Taliban announced the office opening—the result of lengthy behind-the-scenes negotiations involving the U.S., Pakistan, Mr. Karzai and Qatar—shortly after the U.S.-led coalition formally transferred the security lead to Afghan forces. The coalition will now shift to a support and advisory role.
The handover ceremony in Kabul was marred by a bombing at another location in the Afghan capital that targeted a prominent anti-Taliban politician who had engaged in earlier peace contacts with insurgent representatives.
While the ethnic Hazara politician, former warlord Mohammed Mohaqiq, survived Tuesday’s attack, the bomb killed three civilians. In another attack hours later, four coalition troops were killed in eastern Afghanistan, the military said.
These deaths underscored that violence isn’t likely to abate in the immediate future, despite signs of progress in Doha.
Taliban representative Mohammad Sohail Shaheen, in an interview with Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV network outside the group’s new Doha office, said the insurgents have no intention of laying down arms even as they pursue political contacts. “There is no cease-fire so far,” he said. “The military option is continuing.”
Such a dual-track approach has raised concerns that the Taliban could use the establishment of the Doha office to intensify the conflict.
“The question is whether the Taliban really has any interest in a settlement or wants to use peace negotiations to raise its profile, give itself more legitimacy, and as a form for propaganda,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who advised the U.S. military in Afghanistan. “Unfortunately, peace negotiations can become a form of warfare by other means.”
Still, U.S. officials said that the Taliban declaration, read out by the group’s emissary at a news conference in Doha, represented a step toward fulfilling a long-standing U.S. and international demand that the Afghan insurgency sever its links with global terrorism.
The Taliban, who hosted al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden as he plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, said they “would not allow anyone to threaten other countries’ security from Afghan soil,” and that they sought good relations with all the nations of the world.
The statement was the “first step in distancing them…from international terrorism,” a senior Obama administration official said. “We made clear that we didn’t expect immediately for them to break ties with al Qaeda, because that’s the outcome of the negotiation process.”
Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who met with Mr. Karzai and senior U.S. officials in recent months, played an important role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table, Western officials said. The Taliban’s leadership is based in Pakistan and has long enjoyed support from that country’s military and intelligence establishment.
“It is not a deal but it is a breakthrough,” Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a former senior State Department adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said about the Qatar announcement. “The challenge is how to use this opening to push for a political deal that would help stability in Afghanistan.”
In the negotiations scheduled for Thursday, the U.S. plans to urge the Taliban to hand over Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only U.S. Army soldier held captive by the Afghan insurgents, senior administration officials said. In turn, the U.S. expects the Taliban to raise the issue of transferring senior Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Qatar, U.S. officials said. Talks about the possible swap will be on the agenda for future sessions, these officials said.
Previous contacts between the U.S. and the Taliban floundered over the same issue more than a year ago, when the Taliban accused Washington of backtracking on earlier understandings amid stiff congressional opposition to freeing Guantanamo inmates.
“Last time, Congress objected, the president withdrew what the Taliban understood to be a release offer, and the talks collapsed with a Taliban charge that we were negotiating in bad faith,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor at George Washington University who advised senior U.S. military commanders on Afghanistan. “One wonders whether the Congress will be any more open to this now…. The process could be a long journey indeed.”
Thursday’s U.S. talks with the Taliban will be followed quickly by meetings between the Taliban negotiators and the Afghan High Peace Council, senior U.S. officials said.
“The core of this process is not going to be the U.S.-Taliban talks—those can help advance the process—but the core of it is going to be negotiations among Afghans, and the level of trust on both sides is extremely low, as one would expect,” the official said. “So it’s going to be a long, hard process if indeed it advances significantly at all.”
The Taliban said in Tuesday’s declaration that they are opening their “political office” in Doha to “support a political and peaceful solution that can guarantee the end of occupation in Afghanistan, bring an independent Islamic government and true security.”
A senior High Peace Council official said that its negotiations with the Taliban could start in Doha this week. The Qatari government has guaranteed that the emissaries in Doha represent the Taliban leadership headed by Mullah Omar, and that the office won’t serve as a de facto Taliban embassy, he said. “If our talks will not be useful or the Taliban violate the agreements, the office will be closed,” he said.
Mr. Karzai has long looked on the Taliban establishing a Qatar office with suspicion, trying instead to use Saudi Arabia or Turkey as a venue for talks—proposals rejected by the insurgents. Gas-rich Qatar, which doesn’t have an embassy in Afghanistan, has positioned itself as the patron of Islamist movements across the region, from Libyan revolutionaries to Syrian rebels to Palestinian Hamas.
Even in the absence of a formal office, Taliban emissaries operated out of Doha for more than a year, meeting diplomats from Western countries and, in December, traveling to France for unprecedented discussions with leading Afghan politicians, including Mr. Mohaqiq, the target of Tuesday’s Kabul bomb.
Flanked by senior Qatari officials on Tuesday, the Taliban representatives stood in front of their movement’s white flag inscribed with the Muslim profession of faith during the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Doha.
Mr. Karzai on Tuesday repeated a demand that peace talks be moved to Afghanistan as soon as possible. “We don’t have any immediate preconditions for talks between the Afghan peace council and the Taliban, but we have principles laid down,” he said. “The principles are that the talks, having begun in Qatar, must immediately be moved to Afghanistan.”
–Adam Entous and Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article
Write to Nathan Hodge at [email protected] and Yaroslav Trofimov at [email protected]
U.S. discussions with the Taliban, suspended more than a year ago, will resume in Qatar on Thursday, U.S. officials said, after the Taliban opened a political office on Tuesday in Doha, the capital of the Persian Gulf emirate, and made a gesture toward renouncing links to international terrorism.
Mr. Karzai said delegates of his negotiating team, the Afghan High Peace Council, would also soon travel to Doha for talks that aim to avert civil war once combat troops from the U.S.-led coalition go home next year.
The Taliban have until now publicly refused to negotiate with Kabul’s representatives, dismissing Mr. Karzai as an American “puppet.” On Tuesday, the insurgent group said its representatives in Doha would meet Afghans “in due appropriate time.”
President Barack Obama described the Taliban decision and Mr. Karzai’s readiness to engage in Qatar talks as “an important first step toward reconciliation, although it is a very early step.” He added: “We anticipate there will be a lot of bumps in the road.”
The Taliban announced the office opening—the result of lengthy behind-the-scenes negotiations involving the U.S., Pakistan, Mr. Karzai and Qatar—shortly after the U.S.-led coalition formally transferred the security lead to Afghan forces. The coalition will now shift to a support and advisory role.
The handover ceremony in Kabul was marred by a bombing at another location in the Afghan capital that targeted a prominent anti-Taliban politician who had engaged in earlier peace contacts with insurgent representatives.
While the ethnic Hazara politician, former warlord Mohammed Mohaqiq, survived Tuesday’s attack, the bomb killed three civilians. In another attack hours later, four coalition troops were killed in eastern Afghanistan, the military said.
These deaths underscored that violence isn’t likely to abate in the immediate future, despite signs of progress in Doha.
Taliban representative Mohammad Sohail Shaheen, in an interview with Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV network outside the group’s new Doha office, said the insurgents have no intention of laying down arms even as they pursue political contacts. “There is no cease-fire so far,” he said. “The military option is continuing.”
Such a dual-track approach has raised concerns that the Taliban could use the establishment of the Doha office to intensify the conflict.
“The question is whether the Taliban really has any interest in a settlement or wants to use peace negotiations to raise its profile, give itself more legitimacy, and as a form for propaganda,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who advised the U.S. military in Afghanistan. “Unfortunately, peace negotiations can become a form of warfare by other means.”
Still, U.S. officials said that the Taliban declaration, read out by the group’s emissary at a news conference in Doha, represented a step toward fulfilling a long-standing U.S. and international demand that the Afghan insurgency sever its links with global terrorism.
The Taliban, who hosted al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden as he plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, said they “would not allow anyone to threaten other countries’ security from Afghan soil,” and that they sought good relations with all the nations of the world.
The statement was the “first step in distancing them…from international terrorism,” a senior Obama administration official said. “We made clear that we didn’t expect immediately for them to break ties with al Qaeda, because that’s the outcome of the negotiation process.”
Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who met with Mr. Karzai and senior U.S. officials in recent months, played an important role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table, Western officials said. The Taliban’s leadership is based in Pakistan and has long enjoyed support from that country’s military and intelligence establishment.
“It is not a deal but it is a breakthrough,” Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a former senior State Department adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said about the Qatar announcement. “The challenge is how to use this opening to push for a political deal that would help stability in Afghanistan.”
In the negotiations scheduled for Thursday, the U.S. plans to urge the Taliban to hand over Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only U.S. Army soldier held captive by the Afghan insurgents, senior administration officials said. In turn, the U.S. expects the Taliban to raise the issue of transferring senior Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Qatar, U.S. officials said. Talks about the possible swap will be on the agenda for future sessions, these officials said.
Previous contacts between the U.S. and the Taliban floundered over the same issue more than a year ago, when the Taliban accused Washington of backtracking on earlier understandings amid stiff congressional opposition to freeing Guantanamo inmates.
“Last time, Congress objected, the president withdrew what the Taliban understood to be a release offer, and the talks collapsed with a Taliban charge that we were negotiating in bad faith,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor at George Washington University who advised senior U.S. military commanders on Afghanistan. “One wonders whether the Congress will be any more open to this now…. The process could be a long journey indeed.”
Thursday’s U.S. talks with the Taliban will be followed quickly by meetings between the Taliban negotiators and the Afghan High Peace Council, senior U.S. officials said.
“The core of this process is not going to be the U.S.-Taliban talks—those can help advance the process—but the core of it is going to be negotiations among Afghans, and the level of trust on both sides is extremely low, as one would expect,” the official said. “So it’s going to be a long, hard process if indeed it advances significantly at all.”
The Taliban said in Tuesday’s declaration that they are opening their “political office” in Doha to “support a political and peaceful solution that can guarantee the end of occupation in Afghanistan, bring an independent Islamic government and true security.”
A senior High Peace Council official said that its negotiations with the Taliban could start in Doha this week. The Qatari government has guaranteed that the emissaries in Doha represent the Taliban leadership headed by Mullah Omar, and that the office won’t serve as a de facto Taliban embassy, he said. “If our talks will not be useful or the Taliban violate the agreements, the office will be closed,” he said.
Mr. Karzai has long looked on the Taliban establishing a Qatar office with suspicion, trying instead to use Saudi Arabia or Turkey as a venue for talks—proposals rejected by the insurgents. Gas-rich Qatar, which doesn’t have an embassy in Afghanistan, has positioned itself as the patron of Islamist movements across the region, from Libyan revolutionaries to Syrian rebels to Palestinian Hamas.
Even in the absence of a formal office, Taliban emissaries operated out of Doha for more than a year, meeting diplomats from Western countries and, in December, traveling to France for unprecedented discussions with leading Afghan politicians, including Mr. Mohaqiq, the target of Tuesday’s Kabul bomb.
Flanked by senior Qatari officials on Tuesday, the Taliban representatives stood in front of their movement’s white flag inscribed with the Muslim profession of faith during the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Doha.
Mr. Karzai on Tuesday repeated a demand that peace talks be moved to Afghanistan as soon as possible. “We don’t have any immediate preconditions for talks between the Afghan peace council and the Taliban, but we have principles laid down,” he said. “The principles are that the talks, having begun in Qatar, must immediately be moved to Afghanistan.”
–Adam Entous and Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article
Write to Nathan Hodge at [email protected] and Yaroslav Trofimov at [email protected]