Donald Trump says US close to deal with Taliban

Donald Trump said on Friday the US was close to signing a deal with the Taliban to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

Mike Pompeo, on a flight to Muninch on Friday, cautioned that talks among Afghan groups would have to succeed for the US and NATO to reduce their footprint in Afghanistan. Picture: AP

President Donald Trump says the US is close to signing a deal with the Taliban to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and that the outcome of negotiations will be clear in two weeks.

It was the first time Mr Trump has acknowledged the US was close to an accord with the Taliban since talks fell apart last September, when both sides were on the cusp of a deal. “We shouldn’t be there. It’s time to come home,” he said in a podcast interview with Geraldo Rivera.

Officials familiar with the ­negotiations have said that the US and Taliban are soon expected to announce a period of ­reduced ­violence in the country. The reduction of violence is intended to serve as a show of good faith. If successful, the deal could be signed in Doha this month.

“I think we’re very close. I think there’s a good chance that we’ll have a deal, and we’ll see. We’re going to know over the next two weeks,” Mr Trump said.

After a year of painstaking negotiations, the US seemed close to a deal with the Taliban. Then, in September, Mr Trump said the talks were dead, and prospects for ending America’s longest war were dimming again.

The US-Taliban deal is only a first step towards a peace agreement in Afghanistan. The real test will be whether the Taliban and the Afghans are able to reach an agreement on how to run the country after the US is gone. The Taliban have refused to engage with the Afghan government, insisting on a deal with the US first.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a flight to a NATO meeting in Munich that the reduction in violence would allow for more substantive discussions on Afghanistan’s future to start. “If we can get there and we can hold that posture for a while, we may well be able to begin the real serious discussion, which is all the Afghans sitting at a table,” Mr Pompeo said.

He cautioned that talks among Afghan groups would have to succeed for the US and NATO to reduce their footprint in Afghanistan.

The Taliban offered to reduce violence as a concession after Mr Trump walked away from talks last September, blaming the ­decision on an attack that killed a US soldier in Kabul. Mr Trump announced a resumption in talks about two months later.

It is unclear how the ­reduction in violence will be monitored, or what processes will be put into place to address complaints in the event of violations. In many parts of the country, the conflict is fuelled by local disputes, and tribal and ethnic ­rivalries, and factions may be only loosely affiliated with the Taliban.

The reduction in violence also would come at a time of heightened US operations in ­Afghanistan, with the US military ramping up airstrikes in an effort to beat back the growing Taliban-led insurgency.

The US dropped over 7400 munitions in Afghanistan last year — the highest number of airstrikes since the US surge of 2010, when there were more than 100,000 US troops in the country. Taliban-led attacks hit a 10-year high in 2019, according to US government data.

There are about 13,000 US troops in Afghanistan. Under the proposed agreement finalised in September, about 5000 troops would withdraw 135 days after the deal is signed. All US troops would eventually withdraw at the end of the process, which ­includes talks among Afghans.

Mr Trump said the US could win the war, but that it would cost millions of lives. “I could win that war quickly if I wanted to kill millions of people,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal