Uncertainty clouds Afghan talks

WITH the US presidential election barely four months away, top American officials have been engaged in another round of shuttle diplomacy to get intra-Afghan talks off the ground. Recent visits to Kabul, Islamabad and Doha by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and a video conversation between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Taliban chief negotiator Abdul Ghani Baradar last month all aimed at speeding up the peace process. President Donald Trump seems determined to pull out the bulk of US troops from Afghanistan ahead of the November polls and portray this as fulfilment of his pledge and an ‘achievement’, especially when he has little to claim by way of any foreign policy success. The...