Negotiating with the Taliban

The Afghan government spent nearly a year trying to reach a power-sharing agreement with the Taliban—until the group’s fighters swept into Kabul this past August. Those negotiations failed to produce a deal but, in retrospect, they tell us a lot about the Taliban, about why the country fell so quickly, and about what the future holds for Afghanistan.    For an insider’s perspective, we hear this week from Fawzia Koofi, a former Afghan government official who sat across from Taliban negotiators throughout the talks in Doha, Qatar. Later in the episode, host Jenn Williams speaks with Ashley Jackson, a researcher and author who documented a different kind of negotiation with the Taliban—one that Afghan civilians were having across the country in the past few years with members of the group. Jackson wrote about the phenomenon in her book Negotiating Survival: Civilian–Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan.  We want to hear from you! To fill out our 2021 listener survey, go to survey.fan/foreignpolicy.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

Conflicts don’t just get resolved on their own. Most are resolved through a grueling process of give and take, usually behind closed doors. On the podcast The Negotiators, Doha Debates is partnering with Foreign Policy to put listeners in the room. Each episode features the mediators behind the world's most challenging negotiations. You’ll hear about a nuclear standoff, a hostage crisis, a gang mediation, and much more -- successes and failures that shaped people’s lives.