Mattis: Taliban interested in Afghan peace talks

KABUL - The United States is seeing signs of interest from elements of Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency about talks with Kabul to end the more than 16-year-old war, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday, as he made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan.

Mattis offered few details about the Taliban outreach and it was unclear whether the latest reconciliation prospects would prove any more fruitful than previous, frustrated attempts to move toward a negotiated end to Washington's longest war.

Taliban fighters still control large parts of the country and any new battlefield gains by the United States and US-backed Afghan forces cannot promise to overcome Afghanistan's yawning political divisions and entrenched corruption.

"We've had some groups of Taliban - small groups - who have either started to come over or expressed an interest in talking," Mattis told reporters.

His comments came during a trip to Afghanistan that is expected to precede a sharp increase in fighting after US President Donald Trump approved a more aggressive strategy against the insurgents last year that included more US combat advisers and airstrikes.

That reversed a trend of scheduled drawdowns under his predecessor, Barack Obama, and set the stage for an open-ended conflict.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered talks without preconditions with the Taliban last month, in what was seen by US officials as a major overture from Kabul.

His plan includes eventually recognizing the Taliban as a political party.

Game changer

Ghani, hosting Mattis at his presidential palace in Kabul, described the new US strategy as a breakthrough, allowing Kabul to extend its peace offer to the Taliban without doing so from a position of weakness.

"It has been a game changer because it has forced every actor to re-examine their assumptions," Ghani said.

Western diplomats and officials in Kabul say contacts involving intermediaries have been under way with the aim of agreeing on ground rules and potential areas of discussion for possible talks with at least some elements in the Taliban.

However, the insurgents, who seized a district center in western Afghanistan this week, have given no public sign of accepting Ghani's offer, instead issuing several statements suggesting they intended to keep fighting.

Mattis stressed that the military campaign was aimed at driving the insurgents toward a political reconciliation, as opposed to an outright battlefield defeat.

"It may not be that the whole Taliban comes over in one fell swoop. That may be a bridge too far to expect," Mattis said.

"But there are elements of the Taliban clearly interested in talking to the Afghan government."

Reuters - Afp

(China Daily 03/15/2018 page11)