The Qatari government has announced that the inter-Afghan peace talks are postponed indefinitely, after the first round of talks, intended to begin earlier this week, never got off the ground.
This is a big blow to a process that the US and the Taliban have been
setting out for months. The Afghan government has been a drag on the
process before, but this is a real move that could upset those efforts.
The problem this time is that the Afghan government appointed a 250-member delegation,
and then never bothered to send them. The presidential palace stopped
the departure at the airport, but declined to explain why.
There are some indications that President Ghani was irked that a lot of
the participants at the talks weren’t his direct allies, and that the
delegation included a lot of other political factions in Afghanistan.
Qatar: Afghan Peace Talks Are Postponed Indefinitely
Afghan govt refused to send delegation to scheduled talks
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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