Hours after US President Donald Trump announced that he had cancelled a round of ‘secret’ talks with the Taliban at camp David, following a car bombing attack in Kabul that killed ten including an American and a NATO soldier, Afghani news agency Pajhwok reported a Taliban statement saying that the fighting would continue.
Talks between the Afghanistan government and Taliban representatives were scheduled to be held on September 23, with nine rounds having already taken place in Qatar. The possibility of a hitherto undisclosed meeting at Camp David with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and members of the Taliban would have been especially controversial given that the 18th anniversary of the September 11 attacks is just days away.
According to a BBC report, a Taliban statement on the US decision to withdraw from peace talks showed a "lack of maturity and experience". Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said, "The Americans will suffer more than anyone else for cancelling the talks,."
Afghanistan has welcomed Trump’s decision to call off talks, with Ghani saying that real peace would only be possible when the Taliban agree to a ceasefire. In a statement, Ghani said that a full peace agreement would depend on “intra-Afghan” talks and that his office was working with the US and allies for a “dignified and long-lasting peace”.
As part of an ‘in-principal’ agreement with the Taliban, the US was to withdraw 5,000 of its troops in Afghanistan within 135 days. The plan was for a complete troop withdrawal prior to the 2020 presidential election.
The draft peace accord was much criticised by Afghan officials, who did not participate in the negotiations with the Taliban, although the concession in exchange for the withdrawal would have been that the Taliban and Afghan government enter into talks in Oslo, Norway, later in September. The draft peace agreement would only have been made final following its approval by both Trump and Ghani.
In the last week alone, the New York Times estimated that 179 pro-government forces and 110 civilians were killed in Afghanistan. This includes skirmishes between forces and bomb blasts in civilian and military areas.
Even before Trump's announcement, while talks were held between the Taliban and the US (the Taliban refuse to speak directly with Afghan authorities), fighting raged between the sides across Afghanistan. Afghan forces say they repelled an early morning Taliban attack in the western Farah province on Saturday. In addition, security forces say they recaptured the north-eastern district of Wardoj, Badakhshan, that had been under Taliban control for five years.
In the beginning of 2018, the Taliban were estimated to have controlled 56.13 per cent of Afghanistan’s land area according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
An estimated 14,000 US troops and 3,000 NATO troops remain in Afghanistan in a ‘non-combative’ role as part of the ‘Resolute Support’ mission. Since Trump came to power, the US troop presence in Afghanistan increased from around 8,400 troops to the current tally of around 14,000.
Afghanistan is due to hold presidential elections on September 28.
