Mike Pompeo in Qatar to meet Taliban leaders

The United States Secretary of State is in Qatar to meet with Taliban leaders, for the first time since the signing of the historic ceasefire agreement with the fundamentalist group and author of terrorist actions.

Mike Pompeo will “meet with Taliban officials, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban movement and its main negotiator, to ask them to continue to respect the agreement signed last month,” said a spokesman for the secretary of state.

On 29 February, the United States and groups Taliban signed in Doha, an agreement, considered “historic”, providing for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan over the next 14 months, in exchange for peace guarantees.

Before arriving in Qatar, Pompeo made a surprise visit to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, to pressure Afghan political leaders to overcome their differences and establish a united government capable of initiating peace negotiations with the Taliban.

According to the American agency AP, Pompeo left Afghanistan without saying whether he was able to convince them.

At a time when world leaders are suspending official travel, given the pandemic context of covid -19, caused by the new coronavirus, Pompeo went to Kabul to issue an ultimatum to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, who still cannot agree on who was elected in the September presidential election, both of whom held inauguration ceremonies earlier this month.

Pompeo met both today, separately first and together later. According to Afghan reports cited by the AP, Pompeo reportedly gave a deadline until Tuesday for the two leaders to reach a compromise.

Already after the peace agreement, the State Department US found that while the Taliban have stopped the attacks against the coalition forces led by Washington and the Afghan cities, violence on the battlefield remains intense and “unacceptable.”

Still, the United States has begun to withdraw troops, as set out in the agreement. In the first phase, Washington will reduce the military contingent from 13,000 to 8,600 troops.

If the Taliban maintain their pledges to deny refuge to terrorists in Afghanistan, Washington will withdraw the remaining troops in 14 months, according to the agreement.

When it was signed, the agreement was seen as the best opportunity for Afghanistan to find peace after 40 years of war. On the other hand, the agreement represents a way out for the United States, after almost 19 years of war, one of the longest conflicts in American history.

The Taliban or Taleban, who refer to themselves as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement and military organization in Afghanistan currently waging war within that country. Since 2016, the Taliban’s leader is Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada