Afghanistan to hold grand council of elders and politicians to discuss peace
Taliban officials and US diplomats to resume talks in Kabul ahead of the March 17 assembly
Kabul — Afghanistan is planning to hold a grand council of tribal elders and political leaders in March to discuss how to end the Taliban insurgency, a presidential peace envoy said, as Taliban officials and US diplomats prepared to resume talks in Qatar on Monday. The assembly, known as a loya jirga, will be convened in Kabul on March 17, with more than 2,000 participants gathering for four days of debate under a large tent, according to Umer Daudzai, the special peace envoy appointed in 2018 by President Ashraf Ghani. The loya jirga is a centuries-old institution used to build consensus among competing tribes, factions and ethnic groups and was used to lay the foundations of a post-Taliban society after a US-led campaign drove the hardline Islamist militants from power in 2001. Having waged an unrelenting guerrilla war against the government and Western forces since then, the Taliban has consistently refused to talk to the Kabul government, dismissing it as a foreign-backed “puppe...
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