Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban's chief spokesman said, that the Taliban are aiming to reach a withdrawal agreement with the US by the end of January. In a statement to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Shaheen said that they are also prepared to scale down military operations. The statement comes after Taliban announcing on January 17 that they are open to maintaining a ten-day ceasefire with US troops in Afghanistan.
"We have agreed to scale down military operations in days leading up to the signing of the peace agreement with the United States," Shaheen said.
Shaheen also added that the Taliban were "optimistic" a deal with Washington could be signed before the end of the month and that the reduction in fighting across the country would also include the targeting of Afghan forces.
The offer to observe ceasefire was handed over officially in Qatar, that has hosted peace talks between the militant group and the US numerous times.
Washington has for weeks been calling on the militants to reduce violence, posing reduced military action as a condition for resuming formal negotiations on an agreement that would see US troops begin to leave the country in return for security guarantees, after a near two-decade fight.
The Taliban is an Islamist militia group that emerged in the '90s after the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. The Taliban enforced strict Islamic Sharia law when they were in power from 1996 to 2001 and became an insurgent force when they went out of power after the 2001 Afghanistan war. This has led to launching attacks on Afghan civilians. The US military invaded Afghanistan after the September 11 attack in 2001 with aims to dismantle the Al-Qaeda group, whose leader Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. The US troops have also been fighting the Taliban in the region, trying to protect Afghan civilians.
The Taliban and the US had been negotiating the deal for a year and were on the brink of an announcement in September 2019 to end the war that has been going on for nearly 20 years, when President Donald Trump abruptly declared the process “dead”, citing Taliban violence.
Any agreement with the Taliban is expected to have two main pillars — an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a commitment by the insurgents not to offer sanctuary to jihadists. Both of these would need the ultimate approval of Trump.
Many observers agree that the war can no longer be won militarily and that the only route to lasting peace in Afghanistan is for an agreement between the Taliban and the US-backed government in Kabul.
