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August 20, 2018
It's time to talk to the Taliban about peace
In recent days there has been a lot more gruesome news from Afghanistan. Taliban fighters invaded the strategic city of Ghazni, killing a hundred Afghan troops, dozens of civilians and displacing tens of thousands of people. In Kabul a suicide bomber killed students preparing for university exams.
Seventeen years after the US-led coalition invasion, peace would seem as far away as ever … and yet, the Taliban and the US State Department are talking, as recently as last month, in Doha.
We speak to Christopher Kolenda – adjunct Senior Fellow at the Centre for a New American Security; former Senior Advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan to U.S. Under Secretary of Defence; former US Army taskforce commander in Afghanistan.
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