The Taliban on Saturday agreed to hold talks in Qatar with US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad to find a way to end the 17-year-old Afghan war.A senior member of the Taliban confirmed that Khalilzad met with the movement's leaders in Doha on Friday, adding: "Both sides discussed prospects for peace and the US presence in Afghanistan."
Khalilzad, the Afghan-born US adviser, met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Saturday and briefed him on his 10-day tour of several countries in an effort to persuade the Taliban to sit down at the negotiating table.
Khalilzad was appointed last month as US special envoy for reconciliation in Afghanistan, while the administration of President Donald Trump launched new efforts to hold peace talks with the Taliban.
Western diplomats and Asian diplomats in Kabul said Khalilzad, 67, had knowledge of Afghanistan's basic languages and Afghan culture and politics, enabling him to reach out to all those involved in the peace process.
"The Trump administration and rich government now rely on Khalilzad to find a diplomatic way to end the war with the Taliban," a senior Western diplomat in Kabul said.
But the ongoing fighting raises questions about the viability of the US strategy to end the war, which last year focused on ways, most notably air strikes, to force militants to sit at the negotiating table.
Last week, the Taliban demanded a complete withdrawal of foreign troops as the only way to end the war, as the group escalates its attacks in strategic Afghan provinces.
The movement also called on Afghans to boycott parliamentary elections scheduled for October 20.
The United Nations said last week that at least 8,850 Afghan civilians were killed and wounded in the first nine months of 2018, about half of them in suicide bombings and attacks with improvised explosive devices that could amount to war crimes.
