Warring Afghans meet to find peace after decades of war

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates —  Afghanistan’s warring sides started negotiations for the first time, bringing together the Taliban and delegates appointed by the Afghan government Saturday for historic meetings aimed at ending decades of war.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo attended the opening ceremony in Qatar, where the meetings are taking place and where the Taliban maintains a political office. The start of negotiations was the latest in a flurry of diplomatic activity by the Trump administration ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

“Each of you carry a great responsibility,” Pompeo told the participants. “You have an opportunity to overcome your divisions.”

While Saturday’s opening was about ceremony, the hard negotiations will be held behind closed doors and over a number of sessions. But following a meeting with the Taliban on Saturday in Doha, Washington’s peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the U.S. and every Afghan would like to see a deal “sooner rather than later.”

The sides will be tackling tough issues in the negotiations, including the terms of a permanent cease-fire, the rights of women and minorities, and the disarming of tens of thousands of Taliban fighters and militias loyal to warlords, some of them aligned with the government.

Khalilzad said a quick, permanent cease-fire is unlikely, but he held out hope for a gradual reduction in violence until both sides are ready to end their fighting. Mistrust runs deep on both sides, he said.

The Afghan negotiation teams are also expected to discuss constitutional changes and power sharing during their talks. Subsequent rounds of negotiations could be held outside Doha. Germany is among the countries offering to host future negotiations.

Even seemingly mundane issues such as the flag and the name of the country — the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the Taliban’s administration was known when it ruled — could find their way onto the negotiating table and roil tempers.

Among the government-appointed negotiators are four women, who have vowed to preserve women’s rights in any power-sharing deal with the hard-line Taliban. This includes the right to work, education and participation in political life, all denied to women when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan for five years.

The Taliban was ousted in 2001 by a U.S.-led coalition for harboring Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

No women are on the Taliban’s negotiation team, led by their chief justice, Abdul Hakim. The insurgent movement has said it accepted a woman’s right to work, go to school and participate in politics but would not accept a woman as president or chief justice.

Deeply conservative members of the government-appointed High Council for National Reconciliation, which is overseeing the talks, also hold that women can’t serve in either post.

At the opening ceremonies, there was sign of changes in some of the Taliban’s attitudes. Several Taliban representatives jostled to take photographs of leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar as he addressed the ceremony. Photography was banned during the Taliban rule as being against Islam.

Baradar said the Taliban envisioned an Islamic system that embraces all Afghans, without elaborating. He also urged patience as the negotiations proceeded, urging both sides to stick with the talks even in the face of problems.

“The negotiation process may have problems, but the request is that the negotiations move forward with a lot of patience, with a lot of attention, and it should be continued with such kind of attention,” he said. “We want to give [the people of Afghanistan] this assurance that with full honesty we continue the Afghan peace negotiation, and we try for peace and tranquility, we will pave the ground in Afghanistan.”

Abdullah Abdullah, who heads Kabul’s High Council for National Reconciliation, said in his remarks that the sides do not need to agree on every detail but should announce a humanitarian cease-fire.

Both sides will be “peace heroes” if negotiations bring about a lasting peace that protects Afghanistan’s independence and leads to a system based on Islamic principles that preserves the rights of all people, Abdullah said.

Pompeo warned that their decisions and conduct will affect both the size and nature of U.S. assistance.

He encouraged the negotiators to respect Afghanistan’s rich diversity, including women and ethnic and religious minorities. He said that although the choice of Afghanistan’s political system is theirs to make, the U.S. has found that democracy and rotation of political power works best.

“I can only urge these actions. You will write the next chapter of Afghan history,” he said.

Pompeo spoke the day after the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He said that the U.S. will never forget 9/11 and that it welcomes the Taliban’s commitment not to host terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the attacks.

The intra-Afghan negotiations were laid out in a peace deal Washington signed with the Taliban on Feb. 29. At that time the deal was touted as Afghanistan’s best chance at peace in 40 years of war.

But Abdullah noted that, since that agreement was reached, 1,200 people have been killed and more than 15,000 wounded in attacks across the country. The United Nations has urged a reduction of violence and criticized civilian casualties inflicted by both sides.

The talks in Doha follow the Trump administration-brokered recognition of Israel by two Persian Gulf Arab nations — Bahrain on Friday and the United Arab Emirates in August.