Taliban Won’t Partake In Peace Talks until Foreign Troops Withdraw from Afghanistan

By Staff, Agencies

The Taliban said they would not participate in any peace talks for Afghanistan until all foreign forces leave the Asian country.

“Until all foreign forces completely withdraw from our homeland, [we] will not participate in any conference that shall make decisions about Afghanistan,” Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said in a post on Twitter on Tuesday.

Naeem made the remark following reports that US President Joe Biden had decided to withdraw all American troops from the war-ravaged Afghanistan by September 11 this year.

A senior US administration official said on Tuesday the United States “will begin an orderly drawdown of the remaining forces before May 1 and plan to have all US troops out of the country before the 20th anniversary of 9/11.”

The plan is expected to be formally announced Wednesday, the White House said, pushing back a May 1 withdrawal deadline set in a peace deal negotiated by former president Donald Trump with the Taliban.

This is while the militant group has already threatened to resume attacks against US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan if Washington fails to meet the agreed deadline.

Under a February 2020 deal between the Taliban and the Trump administration, Washington vowed to withdraw all the US troops remaining in Afghanistan. In return, the Taliban pledged to stop attacks on US troops.

The US, along with its NATO allies, invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. The invasion — which has led to the longest war in US history — removed the Taliban from power, but the group never stopped its attacks.

Washington has spent trillions of dollars waging the war on Afghanistan, which has left thousands of Afghan civilians and American soldiers dead.

Roughly 7,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan rely on the US for logistics and security support and will also have to pull out if the American forces withdraw.