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| Image: Wiki Commons |
By Ankit Panda
A four-country meeting will pave the path to resumed peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
On Monday, Pakistan will host top officials from Afghanistan, the United States, and China to discuss an upcoming resumption of peace talks between the Afghan national unity government in Kabul and the leadership of the Taliban. The talks will resume after they collapsed last summer, leading to a fall and winter of increased fighting between the government and the insurgents. The United States and China—both allies of Pakistan—supported and witnessed the last round of talks also. Islamabad hosted the last round of talks as well.
Pakistan’s role as host is significant since its military is seen to exercise considerable influence with the leadership of the Taliban. Monday’s meeting comes shortly after reports suggested that Pakistan would present the Afghan government with a list of Taliban willing to reenter negotiations. According to a spokesperson for Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah’s office who spoke to Khaama News, Pakistan has also agreed to cease financial support to Taliban fighters based in Quetta and Peshawar—two Pakistani cities known to be favored by the Taliban leadership.
As I discussed at the end of 2015, the current groundwork for resuming peace talks comes after an attempt by both Kabul and Islamabad to pick up the pieces of a failed attempt at bilateral rapprochement between their governments last summer. Beginning with the multilateral Heart of Asia/Istanbul Process meeting in early December 2015, the two countries have resumed high-level channels to communicate on the issue of peace talks, which have acquired a new urgency for Kabul after the Taliban’s many battlefield successes in late-2015 (most notably, their successful September siege of Kunduz).
Read the full story at The Diplomat