By Missy Ryan, Phil Stewart and Warren Strobel
KABUL/WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) – The Obama
administration is taking steps it hopes could lead to a
resumption of peace talks to end the Afghan conflict, including
reviving a proposed swap of Taliban detainees held at Guantanamo
Bay in return for a U.S. prisoner of war.
According to Western officials familiar with the matter,
President Barack Obama’s senior aides in late December resolved
to renew attempts to arrange the prisoner exchange with the goal
of jump-starting negotiations stalled since last June.
The hope is that the exchange could open the door to more
substantive peace talks on Afghanistan’s future.
Reuters has learned that, to further the initiative, U.S.
officials also have held meetings with the government of Qatar,
which has played a mediating role during several years of
on-and-off peace efforts, officials said.
The White House last month sent out a team of officials,
including the Pentagon’s chief lawyer, Stephen Preston, to Doha
to ensure that the Qatari government remained willing to host
the Taliban detainees who might be sent there from Guantanamo
Bay, the officials said.
Government officials in Qatar reaffirmed that they would
support the transfer under the same conditions as envisioned in
previous discussions, the sources said. U.S.
conditions in the past have included preventing the Taliban
members from traveling outside of Qatar.
Under the plan, Taliban-linked militants would return U.S.
Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who was stationed in Paktika province in
eastern Afghanistan when he disappeared under unclear
circumstances on June 30, 2009, about two months after arriving
in the country.
In another step toward restarting a peace process, Qatar
provided U.S. officials a video showing Bergdahl, which it
obtained from the Taliban, to confirm he remained alive despite
his more than four years in captivity.
News of the video, which U.S. officials said showed Bergdahl
appearing to be in “declining health” but not gravely ill,
surfaced last month, but the footage has not been made public.
U.S. officials said they believed the video was filmed late last
year.
The Daily Beast website reported last week that the U.S.
government had sought the video as proof Bergdahl was still
alive. The site also said that a possible exchange of prisoners
was part of a U.S.-backed effort to reach an agreement with the
Taliban.
U.S. officials believe Bergdahl, the only known U.S. soldier
to remain missing in the war in Afghanistan, is being held in
northwest Pakistan by Taliban-linked militants. Several
officials said they believe the militants holding Bergdahl are
under strict instructions not to harm him because of the
possibility of a prisoner trade.
“Clearly if negotiations with the Taliban do resume at some
point then we will want to talk with them about the safe return
of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. He has been gone far too long, and we
continue to call for and work towards his safe and immediate
release,” said White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.
The White House declined comment on the recent U.S.
discussions with Qatar and the video of Bergdahl.
While the United States has signaled that it is interested
in resuming discussions, the Taliban have not yet responded,
officials said.
NEW CIVIL WAR PROSPECT
U.S. attempts to arrange peace talks between the Taliban and
Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government have collapsed at
least twice in the past. It is far from clear that the
Western-backed Afghan government and the conservative Islamist
Taliban could reconcile their vastly different visions for the
country’s future.
The stakes appear higher now because Karzai is declining to
sign a security agreement between Kabul and Washington that
would permit foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the
end of 2014. That has raised the prospect of renewed civil war.
NATO officials have long said the Afghan conflict will
ultimately be settled at the negotiating table rather than on
the battlefield.
“We still maintain that,” said a Western official in Kabul,
speaking of the peace process generally. “For that to happen,
you need the Taliban and the elected government, whoever it is,
to sit down and talk to one another.” The official spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Previously, U.S. officials held numerous meetings with Tayeb
Agha, a former secretary to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and still
close to him. Renewed meetings with Tayeb Agha would be a key
next step.
A host of things could go wrong, as they have in the past.
Last summer, in what appeared to be a breakthrough, the
Taliban announced it was opening an office in Doha to facilitate
peace talks.
But hopes were dashed when the Taliban raised their flag and
declared the office an outpost of the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan, a reference to the group’s repressive rule from
1996 to 2001. Karzai’s government was furious and called off its
participation in planned talks in Qatar.
The renewed U.S. initiative does not appear to be linked to
an attempt by the Afghan government to kindle its own peace
process.
The possibility that the White House might send senior
Taliban detainees to a third country under unclear custody
circumstances has provoked a backlash from U.S. lawmakers in the
past and could do so again.
The five prisoners include Mohammed Fazl, a former senior
commander of the Taliban army held since early 2002. Not all are
military figures: Khairullah Khairkhwa is a former Taliban
regional governor who is seen by American officials as less
dangerous than some others.
The Afghan government’s decision last week to release 65
inmates that Washington insisted were dangerous Taliban
militants angered U.S. military leaders and lawmakers. It could
make it harder for the White House to argue for transferring
much-higher-level Taliban figures out of U.S. custody.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball and Lesley Wroughton in
Washington, Amena Bakr in Doha and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul.
Editing by Prudence Crowther)
