[The U.S. strategy of stepped-up military engagement has “sent a clear message to the Taliban,” he said. “They cannot wait us out.” However, since rejecting an extension of the cease-fire offered by Ghani, the insurgents have returned to a campaign of aggressive attacks, especially in strategic areas of the countryside.]
By Pamela Constable and John
Hudson
KABUL
— Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, making an unannounced stop in the Afghan capital Monday, said his brief
visit showed him that the Trump administration’s strategy of maintaining an
active U.S. military role, while setting conditions rather than timelines for
success in the war against Taliban insurgents, “is indeed working.”
Pompeo, who spoke at a news conference with
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, reiterated that Washington will participate in a
peace process initiated by Ghani last month, when he announced a unilateral
cease-fire. The truce was observed peacefully by the Taliban for three days,
sparking nationwide hopes for progress in settling the 17-year war.
However, Pompeo said that while the United
States is “prepared to facilitate” negotiations, they must be led and conducted
by Afghans.
“The American role will be important in
this,” he said after his meeting with Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah
Abdullah. But he added: “We can’t run the peace talks; we can’t settle this
from the outside.”
The secretary did not repeat his statement
during the June cease-fire, when he said the administration would be willing to
discuss a variety of insurgent concerns, including the future role of U.S.
troops here. A key Taliban demand for holding talks has been the removal of all
foreign troops.
While saying that U.S. officials were “very
encouraged” by the cease-fire and the enthusiastic response to it from the
Afghan public, Pompeo also suggested that “many of the Taliban now see that
they can’t win on the ground militarily” and thus might be persuaded to join
the peace process without dramatic U.S. concessions.
Pompeo told reporters: “The region and the
world are all tired of what are taking place here in the same way that the
Afghan people are no longer interested in seeing war.”
The U.S. strategy of stepped-up military
engagement has “sent a clear message to the Taliban,” he said. “They cannot
wait us out.” However, since rejecting an extension of the cease-fire offered
by Ghani, the insurgents have returned to a campaign of aggressive attacks,
especially in strategic areas of the countryside.
Pompeo met with U.S. troops at Bagram air
base north of Kabul before continuing his trip, which will take him to Brussels
for a NATO summit that is expected to discuss future foreign troop levels and
engagement in Afghanistan. Before that, he spent several hours meeting with
senior Afghan and U.S. officials on his first visit to the country as secretary
of state.
Ghani thanked Pompeo for the ongoing U.S.
commitment to Afghanistan and pledged to hold free and fair elections in the
coming months. A parliamentary election is scheduled for October, and a
presidential contest is set for next year, when Ghani is expected to run for
reelection.
The Afghan president also said his government
was strongly committed to reforms and that the successful cease-fire has “given
hope to the people that in Afghanistan, yes, we are moving.”
Pompeo arrived in Kabul after visiting
Vietnam. From Afghanistan, the former congressman and CIA director headed to
the United Arab Emirates for talks with UAE leaders on matters such as the war
in Yemen and regional concerns about Iran.
The secretary’s visit here, made under strict
secrecy, came at a moment of both dawning hope and resurgent challenges for
Afghanistan. The conflict continues to produce record-level civilian
casualties, and insurgents continue to hold sway in many areas of the
countryside, where in some cases they have set up parallel mini-states.
The remarkable outpouring of celebration and
reconciliation that swept cities and towns during the brief cease-fire, with
Taliban fighters embracing government troops and civilians tearfully begging
them to stop fighting, made it clear that the entire nation is bone-weary of
the protracted war and is desperate for peace.
But even as Afghanistan’s leading Muslim
clerics declared the war to be un-Islamic, the Taliban brusquely ended the
truce on June 17, ignoring Ghani’s unconditional offer to continue it with
various inducements. Instead, the insurgents swiftly took up arms again,
dampening the hopes that had just been generated.
Hopes for a fresh start with Pakistan, a key
player in reviving the long-stalled peace process, also did not seem to bear
fruit. Although officials there were grateful for a U.S. drone strike in June
that killed an infamous Pakistani Taliban terrorist, U.S. officials said they
had yet to see a “sustained and decisive” Pakistani commitment to ending
support for key groups of Afghan insurgents.
In addition, a spate of recent suicide
bombings and other attacks claimed by the Islamic State — including twin bombs
that killed nine Afghan journalists, another that killed more than 50 people
waiting for voter ID cards, and two deadly bombings of reconciliatory
gatherings during the truce — highlighted the ongoing separate threat by the
extremist Sunni militia that is far more violent than the Taliban and much less
connected to the fabric of Afghan life.
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