Talking to the Taliban While Still Fighting the Taliban

The latest headlines from Afghanistan are much like the old headlines from Afghanistan. This week, U.S.-backed Afghan troops forced the Taliban out of Ghazni city, only after dozens of people had already been killed by the militant group. Afghan forces could do little as Taliban fighters seized Camp Chinaya, a military outpost in the north, killing 17 soldiers. And on Wednesday, the militants killed more than 40 troops and policemen in Baghlan province, also in the north.

Taken individually, each development is an embarrassing defeat for the Afghan government and its Western supporters; taken together, the setbacks, especially the events in Ghazni, challenge the U.S. and Afghan government’s narrative of progress in the conflict. “The Taliban was able to mass, plan, and execute an offensive under the noses of the’s] Resolute Support. They did this undetected,” Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told me. “