In the US talks with the radical Islamic Taliban, Afghanistan’s government is out. Now US Secretary of Defense Shanahan has surprisingly traveled to the Afghan president.
Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan traveled to the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday morning without prior notice.
Shanahan wants to meet in Afghanistan, inter alia, head of state Ashraf Ghani. It is Shanahan’s first overseas trip since replacing Jim Mattis, the retired US Secretary of Defense, earlier this year.
The visit to Afghanistan comes at a time when the US administration of President Donald Trump is promoting peace talks with the radical Islamic Taliban. The Taliban do not recognize the Afghan government and so far refuse to bargain with it. They see Ghanis government only as a stooge of the United States.
The central government controls in Afghanistan currently only about half of the national territory, another 30 percent are contested. There are regularly serious attacks, especially against the government army and security forces.
In early February, a Tailban command in northern Afghanistan attacked three checkpoints on the outskirts of Kunduz, killing at least 41 security forces. More than 30 died in the attack on the local provincial council and at least eleven policemen were killed in neighboring Baghlan province.
Concern is growing in Kabul that the US could pull its troops out of Afghanistan before reaching long-term peace with the Islamists. Trump announced in December that he wanted to withdraw about half of the 14,000 US troops currently stationed in Afghanistan.
US is negotiating with the Taliban without the central government
Critics, including from ranks of the US Republican Trumps, consider this premature. Ex-Defense Minister Mattis is also said to have given up his office in December because of Trump’s withdrawal plans for Afghanistan and Syria. On his arrival in Kabul, interim minister Shanahan emphasized that the US presence in the country should serve the protection of the US and support regional stability.
US negotiations with the Taliban are taking place in the Emirate of Qatar. There, US delegation leader Zalmay Khalilzad speaks with the extremists, excluding the Afghan government. Most recently, Khalilzad had announced „significant progress“ in the negotiations. He is trying to reach an end to the almost two decades of war. There was „a draft contract framework,“ the New York Times quoted the Special Envoy.
The US wants to continue its talks with the Taliban on 25th February. The goal is to reach a peace agreement, if possible, before the Afghan presidential elections in July.
