The senior US diplomat for South and Central Asia, Ambassador Alice Wells, urged Afghanistan’s Taliban to take up last week’s offer by President Ashraf Ghani to hold direct peace negotiations. “It is a positive sign” that the Taliban have not rejected Ghani’s proposal, Wells said—and a planned regional conference in Tashkent this month should reinforce international pressure for the insurgent movement’s acceptance of peace talks.
“The Afghan people want to maintain their constitutional, legal system, representative democracy and strong ties to the rest of the world,” said Wells, speaking to journalists, current and former officials and other Afghan specialists at the US Institute of Peace. “The question I pose to the Taliban is how will you join this … new Afghanistan, and what positive role are you willing to play to secure its future? Because the best way to determine the answer to these tough questions is at the negotiating table with the Afghan government.”
Wells spoke after returning from Afghanistan and the “Kabul Process” conference at which Ghani made his offer.
That meeting “was really a landmark event,” Wells said. “President Ghani endorsed a dignified path to a political settlement and put forward a vision of reconciliation that was both credible and detailed. This was a true, pan-Afghan overture to the Taliban” supported not only by Ghani but by his partners in the country’s coalition government and civil society leaders, including women, she said.
On February 28, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered to allow the Taliban to establish itself as a political party and said he would work to remove sanctions on the militant group, among other incentives, if it joined the government in peace negotiations.
In return, the militants would have to recognize the Kabul government and respect the rule of law.
But the Taliban has continued to reject direct peace talks with the Afghan government and insisted it will only negotiate with the United States, which it calls a “foreign occupying force.” The Taliban also said that NATO forces must withdraw before negotiations can begin.
The United States has refused to withdraw troops as demanded by the Taliban and has insisted that Kabul must play a lead role in peace negotiations.
The Afghan government and the Taliban held peace talks in 2015, but they broke down almost immediately.
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