{"id":3495,"date":"2021-06-08T08:21:38","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T08:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caps.af\/?p=3495"},"modified":"2021-06-08T08:21:38","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T08:21:38","slug":"taliban-aversion-to-peace-talks-could-imperil-u-s-diplomats-and-interpreters-after-military-leaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caps.af\/?p=3495","title":{"rendered":"Taliban aversion to peace talks could imperil U.S. diplomats and interpreters after military leaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

(E News): Taliban officials do not appear to want to negotiate a peace deal with the U.S.-backed central government, according to a senior American general, raising questions about the security of Western officials and their interpreters as they withdraw NATO forces. \u201cThe Taliban need to show an equal commitment to talking very honestly in a straightforward way to try to find a political solution as we go forward,\u201d Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters Monday. \u201cI think the government of Afghanistan is willing to do that. I\u2019m not sure the Taliban is willing to do that. And unfortunately, time is now becoming very short.\u201d Pentagon officials are withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by this summer, in advance of President\u00a0Joe Biden<\/a>\u2019s Sept. 11 deadline. That timeline, combined with the Taliban\u2019s belligerence, could leave thousands of Afghan interpreters vulnerable to militant retaliation for their work with American forces, lawmakers fear. \u201cThe military retrograde in Afghanistan could be complete as early as July,\u201d Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a Monday hearing. \u201cI’ve been told by your senior officials in your department that there’s no way the Special Immigrant Visas can be processed that quickly.\u201d at least to a neighboring country, while their applications for entry to the United States are under review. \u201cWe are looking very actively at every possible contingency to make sure that we can accommodate and care for those who have helped us and are seeking to leave,\u201d Blinken replied. \u201cAnd whether that’s through the Special Immigrant Visa program, whether that’s through the refugee program, whether that’s through parole, other things \u2014 we’re looking very actively at everything.\u201d Blinken implied the U.S. would have time to extract the interpreters even after the military withdrawal, emphasizing American diplomats and officials from other countries will remain in Kabul. \u201cThe embassy is staying,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re working to make sure that other partners stay. We’re building all of that up. And whatever happens in Afghanistan, if there is a significant deterioration in security \u2014 that could well happen, we discussed this before \u2014 I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.\u201d In the meantime, Blinken noted his team has directed dozens of additional State Department officials to review a subset of 5,500 visa applications delayed by a lack of approval from the top State Department official in the country. \u201cWe expect to be able to clear the backlog over the next few months at about the pace of 1,000 a month,\u201d Blinken said. McKenzie, the CENTCOM commander, likewise resisted the idea that the U.S. military\u2019s exit represents a deadline for interpreters to get out of the country. \u201cWe will have the capability to exercise whatever orders we’re given,\u201d he told reporters, referring to a post-withdrawal evacuation of the interpreters. \u201cClearly, it\u2019s easier sometimes than others, but the United States military has remarkable capabilities for this type of thing. We can do whatever is going to be necessary, whenever it would be necessary.\u201d Blinken tried to\u00a0\u201caccelerate”<\/a> the intra-Afghan talks in March by implementing a plan to establish a transitional government to underpin negotiations about Afghanistan\u2019s long-term constitutional structure. Taliban officials have been noncommittal in response, most recently telling the U.S. \u201cthat they might submit their plan\u201d to the central government, according to Blinken\u2019s point man for the talks. \u201cThere are two ways in a long-term perspective: Either there should be a political agreement, or there would be a continued war,\u201d State Department special representative Zalmay Khalilzad\u00a0told<\/a> TOLO NEWS, an Afghanistan-based media outlet. \u201cAnd God forbid, if an endless war happens, interferences in Afghanistan\u2019s affairs by the region might increase, and this is not in Afghanistan\u2019s favor.\u201d The prospect of worsening violence in the absence of the U.S. and other Western militaries has already prompted Australia to close its embassy in Kabul. Still, McKenzie said that Pentagon \u201cplans are very far advanced\u201d on how to protect NATO diplomats after the full-scale withdrawal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(E News): Taliban officials do not appear to want to negotiate a peace deal with the U.S.-backed central government, according to a senior American general, raising questions about the security of Western officials and their interpreters as they withdraw NATO forces. \u201cThe Taliban need to show an equal commitment to talking very honestly in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3496,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions\/3496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}