Central Asia

Taliban announces its readiness to talk with US to find a ‘peaceful solution’

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The Taliban announced on Monday night that the group is ready for talks with the United States and called on US officials “to talk directly to the Political Office of Islamic Emirate (in Qatar) regarding a peaceful solution to the Afghan quandary.”

Referring to the US Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia Alice Wells’ recent statement that the US has kept the doors of dialogue open for the Taliban, the group said “it would help in finding a solution if America accepts the legitimate demands of the Afghan people and forward its own concerns and requests for discussion to the Islamic Emirate through a peaceful channel.”

Kabul based TOLO News reported that the Taliban also said in the statement that the group made it clear to the US in its recent letter that “war is not our choice, rather it has been imposed upon us. For ending the occupation, we want a peaceful resolution to the Afghan issue.”

The statement noted that “it must now be established by America and her allies that the Afghan issue cannot be solved militarily.

“America must henceforth focus on a peaceful strategy for Afghanistan instead of war. Military strategies which have repeatedly been tested in Afghanistan over the past seventeen years will only intensify and prolong the war. And this is not in the interest of anyone.”

In January, after a wave of bombings which rocked Afghanistan lately, US President Donald Trump had ruled out any form of talks with the Afghan Taliban.

ALSO READ: There is no talking with Taliban, we are going to ‘finish them’, says Trump

“Innocent people are being killed left and right” by the Taliban, he told the members of the UN Security Council at a White House lunch on Monday. “Bombing in the middle of children, in the middle of families — bombing, killing all over Afghanistan.”

“So there’s no talking to the Taliban,” he said. “We do not want to talk to the Taliban.”

“We’re going to finish what we have to finish,” he said while adding, “What nobody else has been able to finish, we’re going to be able to do it.”

In August, 2017, The Taliban called on President Donald Trump on Tuesday to review the strategy for the war in Afghanistan and to hold peaceful dialogue directly with Afghans instead of engaging “corrupt” politicians.

ALSO READ: Taliban call on Trump to leave Afghanistan

The Taliban, alternatively spelled Taleban, which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is a ‘Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement’ in Afghanistan currently waging war (an insurgency, or jihad) within that country.

Until his death in 2013, Mullah Mohammed Omar was the supreme commander and spiritual leader of the Taliban. Mullah Akhtar Mansour was elected as his replacement in 2015, and following Mansour’s killing in a May 2016 U.S. drone strike, Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada became the group’s leader.

The Taliban negotiated and ‘asked’ Trump to study the “historical mistakes” of his predecessors and to withdraw troops from Afghanistan completely.

ALSO READ: Pakistan, Afghanistan and China meet in Beijing, resolve to fight terrorism

 

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