On February 27, 2018, after an upsurge in violence, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani proposed unconditional peace talks with the Taliban and offered them recognition as a legal political party and the release of Taliban prisoners. The offer was the most advantageous for the Taliban since the beginning of the war. It was preceded by months of national consensus, which showed that Afghans overwhelmingly supported a negotiated end to the war. [61] [62] Two days earlier, the Taliban had called for talks with the United States and declared, “America and its allies must now see that the Afghan issue cannot be resolved militarily. America must now focus on a peaceful strategy for Afghanistan rather than war. [63] On March 27, 2018, a 20-country conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, supported the Afghan government`s peace offer to the Taliban. [64] However, the Taliban have not responded publicly to Ghani`s offer. [Citation required] Innerafghanian negotiations did not start as planned on March 10, 2020. However, on that day, Ghani signed a decree telling the Afghan government to begin releasing 1,500 Taliban prisoners on March 14 if they agreed to sign pledges guaranteeing that they would not return to battle.[115] If they did not sign the commitments, the decree would not enter into force. [115] On the same day, the United States began withdrawing some troops. [116] Despite the fact that the terms of the peace agreement were also unanimously supported by the UN Security Council,[117] sources close to the Taliban, including Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, later announced that the Ghani group had rejected the prisoner exchange decree and continued to insist on the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners.

[118] [119] [120] On March 14, 2020, Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the National Security Council, announced that President Ghani had delayed the release of Taliban prisoners due to the need to review the list of prisoners, thereby jeopardizing the peace agreement between the United States. . . .