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Intra-party talks among Afghans
A second phase of the peace process would bring together Afghan government officials, opposition figures, civil society representatives and the Taliban to discuss a political roadmap for bringing an end to the war.
The talks are expected to take place in Oslo, Norway, to begin around mid-March. The U.S. will be present along with others, including Germany, Indonesia and the U.N., but only in the role of supporting and facilitating the talks.
"It's not like the Taliban are endlessly evil or that this will bring flowers and roses and doves overnight," says one U.S. official. "We've reached a point where there's a critical mass on all sides where people want to change, want a better future, want a better option, and our job is to continue to create the incentives, continue to create the momentum for people to move forward and change the negative trajectory."
A host of difficult issues are to be addressed in the intra-Afghan talks, including:
a. A long-term cease-fire
The reduction in violence of the past week is intended to be a step toward an overall cessation of hostilities to be worked out in Oslo.
"The agreement explicitly calls on the Taliban to sit down with the other Afghans in the intra-Afghan negotiations, where they will discuss the modalities and the timing of a comprehensive and permanent cease-fire," says a State Department official. "There's a lot of mistrust, decades of fighting, so it's not going to be easy."
This would likely entail a dismantling of the Taliban's military force with the aim of either demobilizing or integrating its members into the Afghan security forces — a goal O'Hanlon considers daunting.
"I think the only realistic way to handle the security forces is that you keep all the different forces more or less in place," he says. "The Taliban continue to hold the parts of the country where they're most influential in certain rural areas, the Afghan army and police control the cities and major highways, and maybe there's a U.N. observation force making sure they don't fight each other."
b. Power sharing
Yet to be determined is the role the Taliban might play in Afghanistan's political future.
The nation continues to roil over results of the disputed September presidential election. President Ashraf Ghani was declared the winner in mid-February, but that result is not recognized by his challenger, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and a planned swearing-in of Ghani for a second term has been postponed until March 10, at the request of the U.S.
"You have a very fragmented country right now within Afghanistan, even apart from the Taliban and the central government who are clearly at war," says Bahar Jalali, who directs the women's mentoring program at the American University of Afghanistan. "There's a lot of consternation with the Taliban coming back and re-emerging as viable political actors. What's going to happen with that?"
c. Women's rights
After women were prohibited under Taliban rule from attending school, working or appearing in public without a male relative as escort, they've won back those rights and gained others in areas no longer dominated by the Taliban.
In his New York Times opinion piece last week, deputy Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani appeared to play down concerns that women would lose their restored freedoms.
"I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights," Haqqani wrote, "where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity."
But many are skeptical of the Taliban's intentions and doubt such assurances.
"We saw what the Taliban's version of Islam looked like in the late 1990s and early 2000s, right before the U.S. military intervention," says Jalali. "That gives nobody any good sense of comfort about the Taliban upholding the rights of women under Islamic law."
Jalali fears the U.S. is simply looking for a way out of Afghanistan before November's election.
"That really speaks to Trump's burning desire to exit from Afghanistan and to say, hey, I ended the Forever War, you know, I can claim credit for that," she says. "I keep saying [it's a] low threshold for peace and a low threshold for ending the war."
For O'Hanlon, the Doha peace agreement is only a start.
"It's a tiny step forward," he says. "It's a good step forward, but it doesn't really mean that phase two or round two is going to follow naturally."
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https://www.npr.org/2020/02/29/810537586/u-s-signs-peace-deal-with-taliban-after-nearly-2-decades-of-war-in-afghanistan