The Afghan Taliban and the Peace Negotiations: Are The Taliban ‘De-Radicalising’? *

Abstract

The primary purpose of this chapter is to discuss the implications for the Taliban of participating in and signing this agreement with the US. Some of the explicit questions that will be addressed by this chapter are: 1. Whether or not these negotiations been accompanied by explicit transformations of the Taliban and, especially, their leadership? 2. Whether the talks caused or resulted in disagreements within Taliban leadership; 3. What the role has been of external actors in these negotiations; 4. Whether we have witnessed any state-level structural reforms (political, constitutional, security sector or civil-military related, transitional justice issues or any other relevant reforms to encourage the initiation 5. Whether the ‘negotiations’ have suggested any significant events or policies to indicate that the Taliban may be de-radicalising. Hence, the purpose of this chapter is how the Afghan Taliban have transformed, if at all over the years, especially in view of the ‘peace negotiations’ and following their victory in 2021. An additional research objective is to explore why and how the inclination towards these negotiations, escalation and de-escalation happened.