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1 September 2021

U.S. Holds Talks With Taliban Over Post-Aug. 31 Presence in Afghanistan

Gordon Lubold and Bojan Pancevski

U.S. military officials had been holding talks with the Taliban as they relied on the longtime enemy force to provide security around the Kabul airport, where an emergency U.S.-led evacuation has been taking place.

The U.S.-Taliban discussions over a possible diplomatic presence after the Aug. 31 evacuation deadline set by President Biden represent an expansion of those airport-security talks. The Biden administration has vowed to continue helping U.S. citizens and Afghan partners leave the country after the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline set by Mr. Biden.

In a CBS interview earlier this week, Ross Wilson, the acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said the two sides have held talks in Qatar about “potential ways forward.”

He declined to say whether there would be a continued U.S. diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, saying, “There are still decisions to be made in Washington about the future shape of our presence and activities here.”

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday that efforts to extract Americans and others out of Afghanistan would continue beyond Aug. 31. “And we will need to coordinate with the Taliban in order to do that,” she said.

Officials have emphasized that talks with the Taliban do not represent U.S. recognition of the group as the country’s government.

U.S. officials also have begun talks with allies over how to use economic and diplomatic pressure to influence events in the country. President Biden on Friday asked U.S. diplomatic officials to coordinate with other countries on ways to ensure that third-party nationals and Afghans with visas are able to leave Afghanistan.

International officials, meanwhile, have called for a meeting of the Group of 20 leading nations in mid-September to coordinate diplomatic efforts toward Afghanistan following the West’s military withdrawal.

Some European officials also have contacted the Taliban to discuss future relations.

The Taliban, which took control after the U.S.-backed government and military collapsed earlier this month, is still viewed by U.S. officials as a terrorist organization that practices brutality and human rights abuses.

U.S. officials have said repeatedly that the relationship with the Taliban during the evacuation has been reasonably productive and that coordination over security has been occurring daily.
The future relationship between the U.S. and the Taliban depends heavily on the security situation in and around the Kabul airport over the next several days, officials said.

“They’ve got a lot of pressure on us. We’ve got a lot of pressure on them,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The number one thing that we’ll remember over the next year is how they treat us over the next week.”

Ms. Psaki on Friday said that Taliban interest in maintaining a functioning airport and economic aid were key points of leverage that world powers have over the Taliban. Mr. Sherman and others also noted that the U.S. has control over much of the Afghan government’s financial reserves, totaling billions of dollars.

Whether the U.S. can keep a small diplomatic corps in Afghanistan would depend on a number of factors, officials said. Chief among them is whether security can be assured by the Taliban at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul after the U.S. military, which now controls the airport, leaves the country.

If the security at the airport is too tenuous, then Washington could consider creating a remote diplomatic presence in a nearby country, officials said.

European governments are pushing to keep the doors open for people trying to flee Afghanistan while preventing a mass of refugees from reaching Europe as the U.S.-led evacuation winds down.

A European plan initiated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron would potentially combine billions of euros in funding for Afghanistan and its neighbors to help refugees and internally displaced people, with measures aimed at securing Europe’s borders and cracking down on smugglers, according to officials and documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.

The proposal, to be put to other European Union members for approval on Tuesday, seeks to calibrate the need to protect those Afghans vulnerable to persecution under the Taliban regime with the desire to pre-empt a repeat of the 2015-16 refugee crisis in Europe, when more than two million asylum seekers streamed into the bloc.

EU officials are holding talks with Taliban leaders to help ensure any EU funding finds its way to those people displaced in recent weeks so as to prevent a mass-scale exodus from the country, according to officials and confidential documents viewed by the Journal.

The officials are also negotiating with Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Qatar and Turkey for those countries to help manage the potential outpouring of refugees.

“The EU and its member states stand determined to act jointly to prevent the recurrence of uncontrolled large-scale migration movements faced in the past,” a draft statement from EU interior ministers reads. “We should avoid creating pull factors and do our utmost to ensure that migrants receive protection primarily in the region itself.”

So far, very few European countries have committed to settle Afghan civilians beyond the people evacuated in recent days. Britain has said it would take in at least 10,000 this year and EU officials have said they could offer cash for member states to resettle people. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said any resettlement plan would be voluntary and that Europe would make commitments only as part of an international agreement with the U.S., Canada and others to take in refugees.

Germany alone has offered 100 million euros, equivalent to $118 million, in emergency aid to Afghanistan, with another €500 million to be shared between Afghanistan and its neighbors and which would primarily be used to take care of refugees, German government officials said.

Even before the fall of Kabul, the EU earmarked more than €20 million to help Iran and Pakistan deal with the inflow of Afghan refugees. On Tuesday, the EU said Pakistan and Iran stood to receive some €100 million this year to help host Afghans. The EU also suspended around €1 billion in development aid to Afghanistan after the Taliban swept into Kabul. That money could also be redirected to help Afghan refugees in the region, diplomats said.

Italian officials indicated that the funding they had previously earmarked to support Afghan armed forces could now be redirected toward humanitarian projects in the country.

Ms. Merkel spoke to the prime minister of Pakistan and the presidents of Uzbekistan and Turkey in recent days, while her special envoy for Afghanistan has been negotiating with senior Taliban officials in Qatar since Aug. 19, according to German government officials.

Markus Potzel, the German negotiator, said he had received assurances that the Taliban would keep a civilian airport running and allow those on Western evacuation lists with proper legal documents to leave after the final pullout of North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops on Aug. 31.

A senior EU official said on Friday that the Taliban wasn’t committing to letting Afghans citizens leave the country. “For the time being, we have nothing material to ensure there will be more evacuations.”

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