Trump administration presses for peace deal in Afghanistan by April, but prospects appear dim - latimes

The Trump administration is pressing to open formal peace talks with insurgents in Afghanistan by April, a timetable driven by the president’s mounting impatience with the stalemated 17-year-old war.

The short-term goal, current and former officials say, is a cease-fire agreement to at least temporarily curtail an alarming rise in attacks by Taliban insurgents that have caused hundreds of Afghan civilian and military casualties a month.

But prospects for a far-reaching political settlement still appear dim, and President Trump faces the risk of a political backlash if he pulls out and the country again becomes a failed state where terrorists could find refuge, as Osama Bin Laden once did.

Without signs of progress in coming months, Trump could face the same dilemma as his predecessors: withdraw all or most of 14,000 U.S. troops and risk a Taliban takeover, or leave them there indefinitely, even though he and his advisors consider the war unwinnable.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan whom Trump appointed in September to handle the peace initiative, is seeking to jump-start the talks. He has warned Afghan government officials who are reluctant to embrace the U.S. peace initiative that they cannot count on U.S. military support forever.

“We need the violence to stop,” said a senior U.S. official familiar with the internal deliberations. “This is a rare opportunity for every player in this.”

Trump has privately said he regretted the decision, as the military situation has shown no signs of improving, officials said.

Without continued U.S. military backing, American commanders say, the Afghan military would quickly collapse. The dependence has left the government in Kabul with few good options if Trump threatens to pull out U.S. forces to pressure it into a deal with the Taliban.

“If we left precipitously right now, I do not believe they would be able to successfully defend their country,” Marine Lt. Gen Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., Trump’s nominee to head U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. 

“If the American officials and generals are of the belief that their occupying forces will remain in Afghanistan and that they will be left alone, then they should reassess their talks,” the statement said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has laid out his own peace plan, which he said would take five years to implement.

Khalilzad is on a much faster track. He is urging the Taliban and Ghani’s government to at least prepare a blueprint for continuing negotiations on ending the war before presidential elections scheduled for April.

Khalilzad said in tweet Thursday that he was in Kabul to discuss “preparations for peace negotiations” with Ghani.

Ghani must deal with deep reluctance to deal with the Taliban, especially among ethnic Tajiks, who have spent decades fighting the primarily Pashtun Taliban.

“Ghani is not in a good position because there’s no consensus about talking to [the] Taliban, and some people in his government and close to his government are adamantly opposed to it,” said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent think tank with an office in Kabul.

"We're near a political settlement,” said Col. Dave Butler, Miller’s spokesman. “If the Taliban want to keep fighting, we will fight and ensure that they feel the pressure.”

Even if the talks do not lead to a deal, many who follow America’s longest war fear that Trump could pull U.S. troops out anyway, probably plunging Afghanistan into years of more fighting and bloodshed.

“There is not much time,” Ruttig said. “Everyone is afraid of one morning waking up and seeing a tweet from the president saying, ‘We’re leaving.’” - More

Trump administration presses for peace deal in Afghanistan by April, but prospects appear dim