S A T U R D A Y, O C T O B E R 5 , 2 0 1 9 . T H E W A S H I N G T O N P O S T EZ RE A
BY SUSANNAH GEORGEkabul — The U.S. special repre-
sentative for Afghanistan has
met with Taliban leaders for the
first time since peace talks be-
tween the two sides were de-
clared “dead” by President
Trump last month, according to
two people familiar with the
matter.
A Pakistani Foreign Ministry
official said the meeting oc-
curred Thursday and lasted
more than an hour. A former
Taliban member in Kabul who
maintains close ties to the
group’s leadership confirmed
that the meeting took place. Both
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity because they were not
authorized to discuss the subject
with the media.
The State Department did not
comment on reports of the meet-
ing with the Taliban but said
U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad
traveled to Islamabad to meet
with Pakistani officials. The de-
partment said in a news release
that the trip did not represent “a
restart of the Afghan Peace Proc-
ess.”
In addition to their visit to
Pakistan, Taliban representa-
tives have made similar visits to
Russia, China and Iran.
Before talks were called off
last month, they were aimed at
reaching a peace deal under
which the United States would
withdraw its forces from Af-
ghanistan in exchange for a
pledge from Taliban leadership
to cut ties with al-Qaeda and
support counterterrorism ef-
forts. Khalilzad’s team and Tali-
ban leaders had negotiated for
more than 10 months, and Khal-
ilzad said in early September
that a deal had been reached “in
principle.”
An announcement of a peace
deal appeared to be imminent
until Trump abruptly scuttled
talks on Sept. 7. Trump said the
decision was made after a Tali-
ban attack resulted in the death
of an American service member
on Sept. 5.
But in the days that followed,
officials in Kabul and Washing-
ton cautioned that talks were
likely on hold rather than entire-
ly scrapped. Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo appeared to signal
as much when he told Fox News
in a Sept. 8 interview that the
negotiations were off “for the
time being.”
Khalilzad arrived in Pakistan
earlier this week, and Taliban
spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid
announced Wednesday that a
delegation led by Mullah Abdul
Ghani Baradar would also travelto Pakistan. Baradar is a co-
founder of the Taliban move-
ment and was a lead negotiator
throughout talks with Khalilzad.
Video released by Pakistan’s
Foreign Ministry showed Talibanleaders embracing ministry offi-
cials as they arrived in Islamabad
for meetings. Pakistan has urged
both sides to resume peace talks,
and the Taliban has said it re-
mains open to talks with theUnited States.
Mujahid, the Taliban spokes-
man, said in a statement
Wednesday that the “agenda for
discussions” with Pakistani offi-
cials included “issues of restora-tion of peace and security in the
region.” The statement made no
mention of talks with Americans.
A State Department spokes-
person said Wednesday that
Khalilzad was in Pakistan “for
consultations with authorities in
Pakistan” to follow up on discus-
sions held between Trump and
Prime Minister Imran Khan at
the U.N. General Assembly last
week. The spokesperson was not
authorized to discuss the trip on
the record and released the state-
ment on the condition of ano-
nymity.
After meeting with Taliban
leaders Thursday, Pakistan’s For-
eign Ministry said Islamabad
and the Taliban “agreed on the
need for ... resumption of the
peace process.”
It is “time to make all possible
efforts for an early, peaceful
resolution of the conflict in Af-
ghanistan,” the Foreign Ministry
said in a statement. The state-
ment also warned that “broad
regional and international con-
sensus for achieving peace in
Afghanistan ... provided an un-
precedented opportunity that
must not be lost.”
[email protected]Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and
Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul
contributed to this report.BY JOANNA SLATERnew delhi — U.S. Sen. Chris Van
Hollen said he was refused per-
mission to visit Kashmir on his
trip to India this week as the
Indian government’s clampdown
in the restive region enters its
third month.
Van Hollen is one of nearly 50
members of Congress who
have expressed concern over the
situation in Kashmir. Indian au-
thorities have deployed thou-
sands of additional troops, shut
down Internet access and mobile
phone service, arrested more than
3,000 people and detained nearly
all of the region’s political leader-
ship.
The crackdown coincided with
India’s announcement on Aug. 5
that it would strip Muslim-major-
ity Kashmir of its autonomy and
statehood. The Indian govern-
ment says the detentions and re-
strictions on communication are
necessary to prevent violent and
potentially deadly protests in re-
sponse to its announcement.
Van Hollen, a Democrat who
represents Maryland, said he
asked to go to Kashmir so he could
see the reality on the ground for
himself.
“If the Indian government has
nothing to hide, they should not
worry about people visiting Kash-
mir and witnessing the situation
with their own eyes,” Van Hollen
said in an interview Friday in New
Delhi.
As the world’s two largest de-
mocracies, India and the United
States “talk a lot about our shared
values,” he said. “I think this is a
moment where transparency is
important.”
Last month, Van Hollen pro-
posed an amendment to an appro-
priations bill that referred explic-
itly to the restrictions implement-
ed by India. While encouraging
“enhanced engagement with In-
dia on issues of mutual interest,” it
also noted “with concern the cur-
rent humanitarian crisis in Kash-
mir” and called on the Indian
government to restore communi-
cations and release detainees.
The amendment was adopted
unanimously by the Senate Ap-
propriations Committee, and the
bill is likely to receive a full vote in
the Senate in the next several
weeks.
A spokesman for India’s Minis-
try of External Affairs declined to
comment on the amendment. A
spokeswoman for the Ministry of
Home Affairs did not respond to a
query about Van Hollen’s inability
to visit Kashmir.
In recent weeks, India has
eased some restrictions in the
Kashmir Valley, which is home to
7 million people. Landline con-
nections are now functioning, al-
beit fitfully, and constraints on
movement are intermittent rather
than total. But mobile service and
Internet connections are cut off.
Meanwhile, the region’s main-
stream political leaders remain in
detention. Some are being held
under a stringent security act
used to combat the region’s long-
running anti-India insurgency.
[email protected]
Niha Masih contributed to this report.
U.S. envoy meets with Taliban nearly a month after peace talks were scuttled
PAKISTAN FOREIGN OFFICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, center, greets the Taliban delegation on Thursday
in Islamabad in a photo that was released by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.Senator
barred from
entering
Kashmir
BY DAVID NAKAMURADays after former White
House adviser John Bolton
warned against diplomacy with
North Korea, a delegation of Kim
Jong Un’s top aides hustled
through a Beijing airport Thurs-
day on its way from Pyongyang
to Stockholm for a new round of
nuclear talks with the United
States.
The prospects for a break-
through this weekend remain
fraught, given the wide gulf after
negotiations broke down during
President Trump’s second sum-
mit with Kim in February in
Hanoi. But the ease and regulari-
ty with which Kim and his top
aides have hopscotched the
globe over the past 18 months
have scrambled international
consensus on how to deal with a
pariah state once known as the
“Hermit Kingdom.”
Kim, who had not traveled
beyond North Korea’s borders
since taking power in late 2011,
signaled a turn to international
engagement by dispatching his
sister and other top aides to the
Winter Olympics in Seoul in
February 2018. Since then, the
35-year-old ruler has orchestrat-
ed a dramatic global coming-out
party punctuated by seven trips
abroad to meet with five foreign
leaders, including three meet-
ings with Trump.
The speed with which Kim has
established himself as a figure of
international aplomb has frus-
trated Bolton, the ousted nation-
al security adviser, and other
hawks who contend that Trump
moved too quickly to reward a
brutal dictator with personal
attention and normalize him on
the world stage, without secur-
ing enforceable commitments to
denuclearize.
Last month, Kim reportedly
invited Trump to visit Pyong-
yang, and although Trump told
reporters that such a trip is
premature, there is talk of an-
other bilateral summit by year’s
end. South Korean officials are
said to be weighing an offer to
Kim to participate in a gathering
in November of Southeast Asian
leaders in Busan, South Korea.
At a Washington think tank on
Monday, Bolton declared that
Kim would never willingly relin-
quish his arsenal and suggested
that the United States consider
strategies to force regime change
or conduct a first-strike military
attack. “These are questions that
need to focus our attention,”
Bolton said, “not can we get
another summit with Kim Jong
Un.”
Trump’s allies discounted Bol-
ton as a warmonger and coun-
tered that the president wasright to reject decades of fruitless
U.S. policy to isolate and punish
the Kim regime. They cited re-
duced bilateral tensions as evi-
dence that the president’s unor-
thodox approach is paying divi-
dends, even though North Korea
has unsettled its neighbors with
short-range missile tests since
the summer.
“I cannot understand for the
life of me that the establishment
in D.C. thinks it doesn’t make
sense to talk to a nation’s leader
in order to do diplomacy,” said
Robert Spalding, a retired Air
Force brigadier general who
served as senior director for
strategy in Trump’s National Se-
curity Council. “The diplomacy is
in addition to [economic] sanc-
tions. To the extent that it ratch-
ets down tensions and creates
the ability for continuous dia-
logue, who knows if that can lead
over time to a softening of atti-
tudes?”
Outside experts said there is
little doubt that Kim has suc-
ceeded in his goal of gaining a
measure of global legitimacy
that had once been unimagina-
ble — a valuable domestic propa-
ganda tool for a young leader
determined to consolidate power
and ensure his future standing.
In addition to Trump, Kim has
met abroad with China’s Xi Jin-
ping, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in,Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Singa-
pore’s Lee Hsien Loong and Viet-
nam’s Nguyen Phu Trong — trips
attended by the kind of red-car-
pet pageantry, local crowds and
international news media atten-
tion reserved for global dignitar-
ies.
Images of Kim being feted by
his hosts have been disseminated
by North Korean state media as
reports of the breakdown in
nuclear negotiations have placed
blame on the United States.
“He can tell his people that he
met with the world’s most pow-
erful leaders and take that
propaganda and use it to justify
his policies,” said Jean H. Lee, a
former Associated Press reporter
who served as bureau chief in
Pyongyang from 2008 to 2013.
“That makes it very hard to
challenge him or raise any criti-
cism and allows him to maintain
very tough policies on his peo-
ple.”
Despite Kim’s pledges to shift
focus from North Korea’s weap-
ons development to economic
growth, the nation continues to
face food shortages amid tough
international sanctions, and Kim
operates some of the harshest
forced-labor camps in the world.
But since his sister, Kim Yo
Jong, led North Korea’s delega-
tion to the Opening Ceremonies
of the Winter Games in Seoul lastyear, the family’s trips have been
met with breathless coverage
that often glosses over the re-
gime’s brutality.
For all the viral social media
focus on oddities that reflected
Kim’s security paranoia — such
as the bodyguards who jogged
next to Kim’s limousine at a
summit with Moon in April 2018
or the green, armored train that
ferried him on a leisurely 60-
hour trip to the second summit
with Trump in Hanoi in February
— there are juxtaposing scenes
that revealed a young leader who
has carefully crafted the messag-
ing behind his charm offensive.
Kim went on a late-evening
tour of Singapore’s glittering sky-
line in June 2018, including stops
at the 55-story Marina Bay Sands
hotel and the Jubilee Bridge. He
answered shouted questions
from U.S. journalists in Hanoi in
February and engaged a Russian
state television reporter upon
arriving at the Vladivostok train
station in April. And he grasped
hands with Trump to welcome
him across the 38th parallel into
North Korean territory during
their hastily arranged meeting at
the Korean demilitarized zone in
June.
“Trump meeting and shaking
hands made it possible for every-
one else to as well,” said Katie
Stallard-Blanchette, a WilsonCenter fellow who worked as a
television correspondent in East
Asia.
White House aides have em-
phasized that Trump has not
lifted punishing economic sanc-
tions even as he has engaged in
diplomacy with Kim.
To Stallard-Blanchette, Kim’s
success in reestablishing diplo-
matic norms has been accompa-
nied by something perhaps more
alarming — a normalization of
missile tests.
Kim has maintained a morato-
rium on nuclear weapons testing
for nearly two years, but the
regime’s short-range projectile
launches since the summer in-
cluded a new type of submarine-
based ballistic missile that land-
ed in waters off Japan this week.
Trump has not commented on
that test, even as it has drawn
objections from Tokyo and Seoul.
“If we went back 18 months
and they tested a submarine
missile on the eve of talks with
the U.S., the next thing is the
talks would be canceled,” Stal-
lard-Blanchette said. “Now
there’s really no response [from
the United States]. That gives
Kim a very positive sense of
where the line is.... He’s march-
ing forward all the time to rede-
fine what’s normal. That’s what’s
dangerous.”
[email protected]Kim Jong Un settles into place on world stage
PANG XINGLEI/XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meet in Pyongyang in June, following several other meetings in
China. South Korean officials are said to be weighing an offer to Kim to participate in a November gathering of Southeast Asian leaders.As nuclear talks resume,
critics say Trump has
given N. Korea legitimacyS0129-5x1.Retropolis
Stories of the past, rediscovered.washingtonpost.com/retropolis