Taliban Set Stage For Peace Talks - Wall Street Journal (India)

By NATHAN HODGE And YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

KABUL—The Taliban set the stage for peace talks with envoys of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S., opening a political office in Qatar on the same day that Kabul formally took over security responsibilities across Afghanistan.

U.S. officials said discussions with the Taliban in Qatar would resume Thursday, a step toward ending a conflict that has dragged on for over a decade and averting civil war once combat troops from the U.S.-led coalition go home next year.

Mr. Karzai said on Tuesday that delegates of his negotiating team, the Afghan High Peace Council, would soon travel to the Qatari capital, Doha. The Taliban held discussions with the U.S. last year but have until now publicly refused to negotiate with Kabul's representatives, dismissing Mr. Karzai as an American "puppet."

President Barack Obama described the Taliban decision and Mr. Karzai's readiness to engage in Qatar talks as "an important first step toward reconciliation, although it is a very early step." He added: "We anticipate there will be a lot of bumps in the road."

The Taliban announced the office opening—the result of months of behind-the-scenes negotiations involving the U.S., Pakistan, Mr. Karzai and Qatar—shortly after the U.S.-led coalition formally handed security to the Afghan government in a ceremony in Kabul. The day of the handover was marred by an insurgent bombing in the Afghan capital that killed three civilians, and targeted a leading anti-Taliban politician, who wasn't injured.

The Taliban declaration, read out by the group's emissary in Doha, was a step toward fulfilling a long-standing U.S. and international demand that the Afghan insurgency sever its links with global terrorism.

The Taliban, who hosted al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden as he plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, said they "would not allow anyone to threaten other countries' security from Afghan soil," and that they sought good relations with all the nations of the world.

The statement was the "first step in distancing them…from international terrorism," a senior Obama administration official said. "We made clear that we didn't expect immediately for them to break ties with al Qaeda, because that's the outcome of the negotiation process."

In the first meeting, scheduled for Thursday, the U.S. plans to urge the Taliban to hand over Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only U.S. Army soldier held captive by the Taliban, senior administration officials said. The U.S. expects the Taliban to raise the issue of transferring senior Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Qatar, U.S. officials said. Talks about the possible swap will be on the agenda for future sessions, these officials said.

"This is something the U.S. has worked on for over two years," said Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a former senior State Department adviser on Afghanistan. "It is not a deal but it is a breakthrough. The challenge is how to use this opening to push for a political deal that would help stability in Afghanistan."

The U.S. meetings with the Taliban will be followed quickly by meetings between the Taliban negotiators and the High Peace Council, the senior U.S. administration official said.

The Afghan Taliban said they are opening an office in the Gulf emirate of Qatar to facilitate peace talks with the Afghan and U.S. Governments. Nathan Hodge reports. Photo: AP.

"The core of this process is not going to be the U.S.-Taliban talks—those can help advance the process—but the core of it is going to be negotiations among Afghans, and the level of trust on both sides is extremely low, as one would expect," the official said. "So it's going to be a long, hard process if indeed it advances significantly at all."

It took years of a "quiet, intense diplomatic effort" just to agree the basic terms of the negotiations in Doha, said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think-tank close to the Obama administration.

This, he said, "should leave no one overly optimistic about the prospect for tangible results from these discussions in the short term."

The Taliban said in Tuesday's declaration that they are opening their "political office" in Doha to "support a political and peaceful solution that can guarantee the end of occupation in Afghanistan, bring an independent Islamic government and true security."

Without specifying the High Peace Council, the statement said that the Qatar representatives will "meet Afghans in time of need."

A senior High Peace Council official said that the negotiations with the Taliban could start in Doha this week. The Qatari government has guaranteed that the emissaries in Doha represent the Taliban leadership headed by Mullah Omar, and that the office won't serve as a de facto Taliban embassy, he said. "If our talks will not be useful or the Taliban violate the agreements, the office will be closed," he said.

Mr. Karzai has long looked on the Taliban establishing a Qatar office with suspicion, trying instead to use Saudi Arabia or Turkey as a venue for talks. Qatar, which doesn't have an embassy in Afghanistan, has positioned itself as the patron of Islamist movements across the region, from Libyan revolutionaries to Syrian rebels to Palestinian Hamas.

On Tuesday, Mr. Karzai repeated a demand that peace talks be moved to Afghanistan as soon as possible. "We don't have any immediate preconditions for talks between the Afghan peace council and the Taliban, but we have principles laid down," he said. "The principles are that the talks, having begun in Qatar, must immediately be moved to Afghanistan."

The Qatar announcement coincided with a landmark transition for Afghanistan: the formal handover of security responsibilities from the U.S.-led coalition to Afghan forces across the country.

During the ceremony at Afghanistan's National Defense University, Mr. Karzai described it as an "historic event" for Afghanistan after over a decade of international military involvement.

Earlier

Afghan National Army troops train in Afghanistan. An announcement that the ANA has taken the lead in Afghanistan's security operations is expected soon. Video by WSJ's Nathan Hodge via #WorldStream.

"As your forces step forward across the country, the main effort of our forces is shifting from combat to support," North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the event. "We will continue to help Afghan troops in operations if needed. But we will no longer plan, execute or lead those operations."

The Afghan forces have won praise in recent weeks for responding quickly and effectively to high-profile attacks by Taliban insurgents. But a deadly bomb blast that rocked western Kabul just as Tuesday's handover ceremony was getting under way—the third insurgent attack in the Afghan capital in 10 days—underscored the militancy's persistent threat.

The target of Tuesday's bombing was powerful parliament member Mohammed Mohaqiq, a former ethnic Hazara warlord who was a leading member of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. While Mr. Mohaqiq was unharmed, three civilians were killed and several people, including six of his bodyguards, were injured in the attack near the office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, police said.

"My car was destroyed and its door blown off, but I am fine," Mr. Mohaqiq said after the attack. "The enemies of Afghanistan keep doing such things all the time, and I don't take it seriously."

The blast blew out windows of nearby markets, buildings and houses. A Taliban spokesman, reached for comment, said he was checking whether his movement was responsible.

"The question is whether the Taliban really has any interest in a settlement or wants to use peace negotiations to raise its profile, give itself more legitimacy, and as a form for propaganda?" said Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic an International Studies who advised the U.S. military in Afghanistan. "Unfortunately, peace negotiations can become a form of warfare by other means."

—Adam Entous
contributed to this article

Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com and Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com