FIRST the good news: after years of insisting it would only countenance peace talks after foreign troops had quit Afghanistan, on January 3rd the Taliban issued a statement saying they had agreed to open a political office in Qatar to facilitate negotiations. Talking to the Taliban has always been impeded by the lack of a brass plate on an office door somewhere announcing their presence. This should help. The breakthrough was buried at the bottom of an emailed statement which included a lot of bluster about the Taliban’s glorious self-image as a former regime that brought peace and justice to Afghanistan in the 1990s, but it was still a breakthrough.
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