Daily Times

America’s decision to cancel talks with Afghan Taliban is shrouded in mystery, setting off a lot of speculation. On the face of it, US President Donald Trump has said this decision is a reaction to the recent attack on US forces in Afghanistan.

In the same breath, he tried to play it down tweeting that one American and 11 others were killed in the incident. This tweet has generated more than the usual share of the controversy he stirs.

The avowed purpose of these talks was to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and bring an end to this long war. This also happened to be an election promise of Trump’s. Efforts to achieve this goal picked up in 2017.

The US also appointed Zalmay Khalilzad as its special representative for Afghan reconciliation. Khalilzad has seemingly made two mistakes that have the potential to scuttle the whole process.

First, he frequented capitals of all neighbours of Afghanistan including China, India and of course Pakistan in search of bringing Taliban to the table. But he deliberately missed out Iran, one of the most important players in Afghanistan.

Second, with the help of Pakistan, he was able to start direct talks with Taliban but he picked Doha as the destination for most of the sessions. Only one session was held in UAE. He perhaps had forgotten that Pakistan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had recognised the government of Taliban in what surely was the darkest era for Afghanistan. However hard Pakistan may have tried, this process was destined to be doomed until and unless the KSA was involved in it.

During over 10 reported and many unreported sessions of talks, Khalilzad could not convince the Taliban that the government in Kabul was also a party to any decision on Afghanistan’s future.

Taliban insisted that the US is the only partner for any future decisions because they believe that the Afghan government is nothing but a US stooge. They miscalculated the fact that time was running out fast as the US wanted all this wind things up before its elections.

This failure is however not bad news for Afghans who now may have less woes in their lives than full Taliban rule. *