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Hopes Plummet on Success of Intra-Afghan Peace Talks

Jeff Seldin

   WASHINGTON - A U.S. government watchdog is expressing increased
   skepticism about the prospects for peace in Afghanistan, warning the
   United States-led push to reconcile Afghanistan's Western-backed
   government with the Taliban are failing short.
   In a blunt assessment Monday, the U.S. Special Inspector General for
   Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned that despite the fanfare that
   surrounded last year's withdrawal agreement between Washington and the
   Taliban, follow-on talks between the Taliban and the government in
   Kabul "have so far yielded few substantive results."
   "There has been no cease-fire agreement and high levels of insurgent
   and extremist violence continued in Afghanistan this quarter despite
   repeated pleas from senior U.S. and international officials," Special
   Inspector General John Sopko wrote in his latest quarterly report, the
   50th such assessment sent to U.S. lawmakers.
   "Nor is it evident '¦ that the Taliban has broken ties with the
   al-Qaida terrorists who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on the United
   States," he added.
   The U.S.-Taliban agreement requires all American and NATO troops to
   leave the country by May in return for the insurgents' counterterrorism
   guarantees and pledges they will negotiate with Afghan rivals a
   political deal to permanently end two decades of Afghan war.
   Yet despite the agreement, U.S. military officials have repeatedly cast
   doubt on the Taliban's intent and desire to follow through on its
   guarantees to Washington. And the new report suggests progress in other
   keys areas has likewise been stymied.
   The SIGAR report, based on data from the U.S. military and the U.S.-led
   NATO mission in Afghanistan, cautioned fighting raged across much of
   the country over the last three months of 2020.
   According to U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, while the number of so-called
   enemy-initiated attacks were "slightly lower" in the fourth quarter of
   2020 than they were in the previous three months, attacks had still
   increased compared to the same time in 2019.
   In some part of Afghanistan, the trend appeared to be even more
   worrisome.
   "Enemy attacks in Kabul were higher than during the previous quarter,"
   U.S. Forces-Afghanistan told SIGAR. "They were much higher than in the
   same quarter last year."
   There are also indications that despite maintaining sufficient troop
   levels, Afghan security forces continued to lose ground to the Taliban.

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