As Russia Plans Afghan Peace Talks, Kabul Questions Taliban’s Murky Motives by Pamela Constable – Washington Post
Just over a week ago, Afghan and U.S. officials hoped that after 17 years of war, the Taliban was starting down a road to peace. Despite a deadly four-day attack on the city of Ghazni, President Ashraf Ghani had offered the insurgents a second cease-fire since June, and Taliban leaders had hinted that they wanted to continue private talks held with U.S. officials in July.
Now, that optimism has all but collapsed. With the Taliban ignoring Ghani’s truce offer and accepting an invitation for talks in Moscow instead, analysts said the momentum for direct negotiations has been derailed by international politics. And the intentions of insurgent leaders — who spout constant propaganda but remain invisible to the public — seem more inscrutable than ever.
“This could be a political ploy by the Taliban to exploit Washington’s poor relations with Russia and pressure it to agree to more generous terms, or they may merely want to see what the Russians have to offer,” said Michael Kugelman, an expert on Afghanistan at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington…