KABUL—An Afghan government delegation recently met with Taliban members in Qatar to discuss efforts to end the country’s long-running war, officials said, after peace talks collapsed last year.
The high-level meeting at the end of February was held discreetly in the capital Doha to discuss a possible announcement about restarting official peace talks, one of the officials briefed on the meeting told The Wall Street Journal.
“That was the deal, that they wouldn’t simply reject that they’re going to meet [us] face to face [for official talks],” a senior Afghan government official said.
“I heard from both sides that it was positive meeting,” said a person close to the Taliban, commenting on the outcome of the discussions.
Still, despite efforts by Afghan delegates to reach out to the Taliban, the militant group on Saturday said it hadn’t agreed to enter into an official peace process. “Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour did not authorize any group member to participate,” the group said in a statement.
Both sides failed to agree on how high-level participants in such negotiations would be and where the meetings would be held, another official said.
Yet while the Taliban have publicly stated their opposition to talks, Afghan and foreign officials, along with people close to the group, say some senior leaders of the insurgency are in favor of participating in the peace process.
The Afghan president’s office declined to comment on the high-level talks with the Taliban in Qatar last month, saying, “The government uses varying channels to contact and communicate with Taliban groups with the aim of pursuing an Afghan government-led peace process to end violence.”
The Doha meeting followed a series of talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the U.S. and China aimed at agreeing on a framework for peace. At the end of the most-recent meetings between the four countries late last month, representatives of the participants said talks with the Taliban would begin in March.
Fighting has escalated in Afghanistan since most foreign troops pulled out at the end of 2014, with civilian casualties at a record high since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is under intense pressure to stem the bloodshed, and U.S.-backed efforts to bring the Taliban to the table for peace talks have intensified in recent months.
The militant group hasn’t participated in the four-country meetings, and its political commission, which is based in Doha and has a mandate to lead its peace efforts, recently outlined conditions for joining such a process. Those included the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the country, the lifting of United Nations sanctions on its Taliban members and the redrafting of the Afghan constitution.
The Taliban have made gains on the battlefield, particularly over the past year, but the group is beset with internal rivalries, and some factions have turned on each other since their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was revealed in July to have been dead for more than two years.
Adding to pressure on the Taliban leadership, Islamic State militants are challenging the group’s influence in eastern parts of the country.
The Afghan government and its foreign allies say internal rivalries could actually help encourage the Taliban to enter talks before those splits widen irreparably, but they say they are concerned the divisions would make it more difficult to broker a peace deal. “The fear is that these talks could split them further,” the Afghan official said.
Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban as a proxy for its interests over recent decades. Islamabad acknowledges it has influence over the Afghan Taliban but denies it can control the group.
Afghanistan’s Mr. Ghani wants Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the table for the talks and is hoping China and the U.S. can help broker a deal. Meanwhile, Pakistan is fighting its own homegrown Taliban movement that is separate from its Afghan counterpart.
The Afghan president, who has also been criticized at home for the strategy of going through Pakistan to negotiate with the Taliban, has promised a peace process will start soon. www.wsj.com/articles/afghan-taliban-officials-recently-met-to-discuss-efforts-to-end-war-1457191246
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