Mattis Visits Afghanistan Amid Push for Peace Talks

KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit Friday, in the midst of a push by the Trump administration to restart peace talks with the Taliban.

Mattis was joined in Kabul, the capital, by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., and was met by the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin Scott Miller, before a planned meeting with President Ashraf Ghani. Apache helicopter gunships circled the U.S. Embassy and the U.S.-led coalition’s military headquarters for a half-hour as the delegation arrived.

Haroon Chakhansuri, a spokesman for Ghani, said that the U.S. officials had discussed peace prospects as well as other subjects with the president and the Afghan government’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah.

The officials did not make any public comments during the visit.

Mattis has recently expressed hope that the long-moribund peace process could be restarted. Talking to reporters aboard his plane as he flew to India on Wednesday, he said the U.S. Embassy in Kabul had dedicated more staff to working on reconciliation with the Taliban.

“We have more indications that reconciliation is no longer just a shimmer out there, no longer just a mirage,” Mattis said. “It now has some framework, there’s some open lines of communication.”

That appeared to be an indirect acknowledgment of a July meeting between a senior State Department official and Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar. The State Department’s senior South Asia diplomat, Alice Wells, participated, according to Taliban officials.

That meeting marked a departure from an earlier insistence by the United States that any peace talks should begin between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The insurgents have insisted they would only negotiate with the Americans, dismissing the Afghan government as a “puppet regime.”

Despite the new approach, U.S. officials have insisted that the peace process would still be “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led.”

Ghani recently appointed Hamdullah Mohib, a computer expert who had been Afghanistan’s ambassador in Washington but has little security experience, to be his new national security adviser, a Cabinet position.

Mattis’ visit was his first to Afghanistan since March. He has been instrumental in persuading President Donald Trump to resist calls by Republican Party populists to pull out of Afghanistan and instead give commanders the latitude to increase their troop levels here, which they have done on a modest scale.

There are now 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, about 4,000 more than last year. During the peak of the U.S. involvement during the Obama administration, there were 140,000 coalition troops there.

The defense secretary, in his remarks Wednesday, said the insurgents’ recent attacks were “not militarily significant other than the tragedy of killing innocent women and children.” He said there was increasing interest in reconciliation. “The State Department has put additional staff into the embassy with that sole effort. You’re seeing this now pick up traction,” Mattis said.

The insurgents last month overran the strategic city of Ghazni for six days, killing hundreds of Afghan soldiers and policemen in attacks throughout the country.

While the Taliban insurgents have said they will no longer deliberately target civilians, Islamic State group extremists in the country have continued to do so. They have carried out a series of deadly attacks in Kabul, most recently Wednesday when a double bombing killed 25 people, including two journalists.

There was no repeat of recent rocket attacks in the capital city during the visit, as happened on Mattis’ visit a year ago.

On Friday, officials said there had been two Taliban attacks elsewhere in the country. In western Farah province, five police officers were killed and four others were missing and feared dead after a Taliban attack late Thursday night on their check post on the outskirts of the city of Farah, the provincial capital, according to Farid Bakhtawar, chairman of the provincial council.

Farah city was briefly overrun by the Taliban in January.

In northern Jowzjan province, fighting between Taliban insurgents and local militiamen supporting the government broke out Thursday and continued through Friday morning, with seven militiamen killed, according to the provincial council chairman, Babur Eshchi.