Senior Taliban members once held at Guantanamo Bay have joined the group’s political office in Qatar, a potential step forward in nascent peace talks under way between Washington and Afghanistan’s main insurgency. Their participation, confirmed by sources inside the Taliban, follows two rounds of discussions between the Taliban and American officials in the Gulf nation in July and earlier this month—the last with Zalmay Khalilzad, a high-powered new U.S. envoy with a mandate to forge a peace process.

Source: Wall Street Journal October 30, 2018 09:02 UTC