The Afghan government has been at a tense stalemate for nearly two weeks, with no progress made on plans to begin negotiations between Afghan and Taliban leaders over the country’s future political system. Those talks were scheduled to begin by March 10, after U.S. officials signed an agreement with Taliban representatives Feb. 29 that would allow thousands of U.S. troops to begin leaving the country.
Pompeo was greeted on arrival by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. diplomat who has been leading peace talks with the Taliban for the past year. In the past week, Khalilzad has been attempting to smooth relations between Ghani and Abdullah, but he appears to have made scant progress. Afghan political and religious leaders have also been mediating between them, to no avail.
The secretary’s announced schedule includes a lengthy private meeting with Ghani, followed by a similar one with Abdullah. After that, the two Afghan leaders were scheduled to meet alone, followed by a final meeting with Pompeo. After brief meetings with Afghan security officials, Pompeo was scheduled to leave the country early Monday evening.
The unusual and quick visit here by the top U.S. diplomat appears to reflect the high level of frustration in Washington over the high-stakes political standoff in Kabul, which has aroused concerns here that a civil war could erupt. Abdullah, who claims he was cheated out of victory at the polls, is backed by an array of powerful former ethnic warlords.
Pompeo’s apparent mediation mission is eerily reminiscent of the last Afghan presidential election in 2014 when then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry successfully mediated an identical spat between Ghani and Abdullah. Both claimed to have won the presidency in a fraud-marred election, but Kerry persuaded them to accept a power-sharing arrangement that has proven tense and fractious.
Pompeo is also likely to raise a second issue with Ghani that has undercut the Taliban peace deal almost from the day it was signed. The agreement reached in Qatar called for an exchange of prisoners in which the Ghani government would release 5,000 Taliban fighters and the Taliban would release 1,000 captured Afghan government forces.
The Afghan president, however, strongly objected, saying that releasing so many insurgents would rob the government of significant leverage in future talks and would risk freeing large numbers of enemy fighters who might well return to the battle. In the past 10 days, his aides have been assessing lists of prisoners and said they are willing to release a smaller number who are old, sick or otherwise less likely to go back to fighting.
Khalilzad has also been trying to help work out an agreement on prisoners, and over the weekend he said in a tweet that he had facilitated a video conference meeting between Taliban and Afghan prison officials on “technical” aspects of the release. He did not say whether or when any release would start.
Pompeo, who attended the peace agreement signing in Doha, the Qatari capital, said at the time that the path forward would be “rocky” and that launching meaningful negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan leaders over a shared role in governing would be difficult. But he also said that while Taliban leaders have “an enormous amount of blood on their hands, they have now made a break” from their past and have promised not to allow anti-U.S. terrorist activities on Afghan soil.
The agreement, which was widely criticized by Afghans as giving too much leeway to the Taliban, called for both sides to observe a brief “reduction in violence.” It also included a Taliban anti-terrorism pledge and called for intra-Afghan talks to begin within a short time.
In return, the Trump administration is expected to begin withdrawing some troops immediately, reducing the number here from about 14,000 to about 8,600, and then pulling back most of the remaining forces by the end of the year. Some reductions have reportedly begun, but U.S. military officials have not provided public details.
