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(82,333 posts) Tue Jan 22, 2013, 11:26 AM Jan 2013

The Lure of Office Space and Other Ways to Talk to the Taliban

By Mujib Mashal / Kabul
Jan. 22, 2013

One of the more intriguing moves in the Afghanistan endgame was the joint announcement by the U.S. and Afghan Presidents that office space had been made available for the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. The office, formally announced during Hamid Karzai’s recent trip to Washington, will provide a physical space for face-to-face talks with the Taliban.

The hope is that providing a place to operate above ground (plus the mediation of the Qataris) will lure the Taliban — who officially refuse to speak to the Karzai government — into serious talks with the Kabul regime. Still, a senior government official aware of discussions between Karzai and Obama says the opening of the Doha office is conditional: it cannot be used as a Taliban diplomatic post — one that would give them a sense of international recognition and legitimacy; nor can it be used as a fundraising platform. “It can be closed down anytime if the conditions are not met by the Taliban,” he says.

The status of the office would be reviewed in six months. If the Taliban continue to refuse to talk to the Afghan government by then, the office will be closed, two senior officials tell TIME. One also suggests that slapping further sanctions — in the form of reactivating the U.N. blacklist that defines Taliban leaders as terrorists — would not be off the table.

Critics of the Karzai regime’s overtures for peace say it is a one-way road, with the Taliban responding with a campaign of high-profile assassinations. A rigid timeline for Taliban cooperation around the Doha office is the first time the Afghan government has presented serious conditions to the insurgency. Some interpret it as an attempt by the government to show that there is a limit to their patience for Taliban intransigence.

http://world.time.com/2013/01/22/the-lure-of-office-space-and-other-ways-to-talk-to-the-taliban/