Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
“The review is an opportunity to send a message that, yes, the U.S. is going to send more troops, but it’s not to achieve a forever military victory,” said Andrew Wilder, an Afghanistan expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “Rather, it’s to try to bring about a negotiated end to this conflict.”
Andrew Wilder, vice president of the Asia Program at the United States Institute of Peace, and Michael Kugleman, a South Asia specialist at the Wilson Center, shared insights from Washington. RFE/RL Media Manager Muhammad Tahir moderated our discussion from the same town. I contributed from Prague.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday announced a unilateral, week-long cease-fire with the Taliban, the latest move in his government’s increasingly urgent bid for peace and a reflection of the insurgent group’s battlefield strength.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia threw its weight behind the Afghan government’s attempts to kindle a peace process with the Taliban this week, reflecting growing international pressure to bring Afghanistan’s long war to a negotiated end.
A brazen and bloody overnight assault Friday by the Taliban on a key provincial capital in central Afghanistan has increased pressure on U.S.-backed Afghan forces that are withering under relentless attacks, prompting President Ashraf Ghani to call an emergency meeting of his security officials. While government security forces in the city of Ghazni repulsed the multipronged attack with the help of U.S. air support, Taliban insurgents remained...
In a rare diplomatic foray and the strongest sign yet of increasing Taliban political clout in the region, the head of the insurgents’ political office led a delegation to Uzbekistan to meet senior Foreign Ministry officials there, Uzbek and Taliban officials said. Taliban political chief Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai represented the insurgents in the four-day talks that ended on Friday and included meetings with Uzbekistan’s Foreign Minister...
When the Afghan government and Taliban fighters declared a cease-fire in mid-June for the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, there were three days of blissful quiet. Since then, the Taliban and the Islamic State group, which was not part of the temporary truce, have unleashed attacks...
With one of the deadliest attacks of Afghanistan’s 17-year insurgency just hours before a new round of peace talks, the Taliban rammed home its message that it intends to agree any settlement from a position of strength on the...
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that previously unscheduled peace talks between the Taliban and the United States in Pakistan risk engulfing the country in regional rivalries. In an interview with The Associated Press in the capital Kabul, Karzai worried that the accelerated peace process was being hijacked by...
Andrew Wilder spoke to SiriusXM POTUS Ch. 124 about recent events in Afghanistan. Wilder explained the necessity for brokering a political solution with the Taliban and providing more U.S. troops for training Afghan National Security Forces to defeat terrorist organization like ISIS and al-Qaeda.