(TOLO news): \u201cA major troop withdrawal must be contingent on a final peace,\u201d the nine former diplomats wrote on the website of the Atlantic Council, a think tank. \u201cThe initial US drawdown should not go so far or so fast that the Taliban believe they can achieve military victory.\u201d The nine envoys, including five former ambassadors to Kabul, a former special envoy to Afghanistan and a former deputy secretary of State, issued their warning a day after US chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad said the US and the Taliban have agreed in principle on withdrawal of nearly 5,000 American troops from Afghanistan. Mr. Khalilzad in an interview with TOLOnews declined to say how long the rest of the roughly 14,000 US troops would stay. However, US officials repeatedly have said the pullout would be \u201cconditions-based.\u201d The withdrawal of the 5,000 troops from five bases in 135 days will be followed by Taliban\u2019s commitment to preventing their decades-long ally, al Qaeda, or other extremists from using the country as a haven for new attacks. Mr. Khalilzad said Trump must approve the draft before it can be signed. The former envoys wrote that maintaining a major US troop presence would have \u201ca critical influence on the chances for successful peace negotiations\u201d. \u201cIt is not clear whether peace is possible. The Taliban have made no clear statements about the conditions they would accept for a peaceful settlement with their fellow Afghans, nor do they have a track record of working with other political forces,\u201d they said. \u201cThere is an outcome far worse than the status quo, namely a return to the total civil war that consumed Afghanistan as badly as the war with the Russians and something that could follow a breakdown in negotiations if we remove too much support from the Afghan state, they wrote. A new civil war \u201ccould prove catastrophic for US national security\u201d as it likely would see the Taliban maintain their alliance with al Qaeda and allow Daesh\u2019s growing local affiliate\u201d to further expand, they said. This comes as critics on Tuesday criticized President Ashraf Ghani\u2019s approach on the formation of the negotiating team, saying that delay in this respect shows there is a lack of will on moving forward the peace process. Back in July, the State Minister for Peace Affairs, Abdul Salam Rahimi said discussions have started on the formation of a 15-member negotiating team. Mr. Khalilzad, who recently wrapped up the ninth round of talks with the Taliban in Doha, criticized the Afghan government for not finalizing the negotiating team which is expected to engage in direct negotiations with the Taliban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(TOLO news): \u201cA major troop withdrawal must be contingent on a final peace,\u201d the nine former diplomats wrote on the website of the Atlantic Council, a think tank. \u201cThe initial US drawdown should not go so far or so fast that the Taliban believe they can achieve military victory.\u201d The nine envoys, including five former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1995,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions\/1995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}