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Signs of Hope for Afghan Peace Talks

The Kabul Process, President Ghani’s Offer, and the Ongoing Search for Peace

Date: Friday, March 9, 2018 / Time: 10:00am - 11:00am 

Center: Asia Center

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President Ghani’s announcement at last week’s Kabul Process Conference of a peace offer to the Taliban was a potential watershed in the Afghan peace process, and arguably the most forward-leaning plan for peace with the Taliban the Afghan government has ever put forward. In recent weeks, the Taliban also made unusually specific public offers of peace talks with the United States though the offers continued to exclude the Afghan government. These developments may offer glimmers of hope after years of frustrated efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan.

Ambassador Alice Wells, the Senior Bureau Official in the Department of State’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, leads the Afghan peace effort for the U.S. government and has freshly returned from Afghanistan, where she attended the Kabul Process Conference. At the U.S. Institute of Peace Ambassador Wells spoke on the significance of these events, the U.S. government’s potential response, and the outlook for Afghan peace going forward.

Review the conversation on Twitter with #AfghanPeace.

Amb. Alice Wells
Senior Bureau Official, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs,
U.S. Department of State

Andrew Wilder, Moderator
Vice President, U.S. Institute of Peace

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