The United States and the Taliban may have agreed on a plan for American troops to leave Afghanistan, sources privy to the development told VOA Saturday. In return, the insurgent group has given assurances that no international terrorist groups would be allowed to use Afghan soil to threaten America or any other country in the future.

The understanding is the outcome of nearly a week of intense, uninterrupted dialogue between U.S. and insurgent representatives in Doha, Qatar. Representatives of the host government and Pakistan also have been in attendance.

The sources told VOA they expected the two negotiating sides to announce the withdrawal plan by Monday at the latest, if all goes as planned. The U.S. drawdown plan would require the Taliban to observe a cease-fire. Both the withdrawal and the cease-fire, however, will be “limited and conditional.”

Sources did not rule out the possibility that President Donald Trump might announce and give details of the final agreement with the Taliban at his State of the Union speech, whenever that is scheduled. 

The U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been leading the American side in what observers describe as an unprecedented engagement between the two adversaries in the 17-year-old war.

Still work to do

Khalilzad tweeted late Saturday that after six days in Doha, he was headed to Afghanistan for consultations.

“We have a number of issues left to work out. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and ‘everything’ must include an intra-Afghan dialogue and comprehensive cease-fire,” he said.

Khalilzad described his meetings in Doha as “more productive than they have been in the past” and added that the two sides had made “significant progress on vital issues.” He did not elaborate and said the talks would resume shortly.

Late Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a tweet, “Encouraging news from @US4AfghanPeace (Khalilzad). He reports significant progress in talks with the Taliban on #Afghanistan reconciliation.”

He added later, “The U.S. is serious about pursuing peace, preventing #Afghanistan from continuing to be a space for international terrorism & bringing forces home. Working with the Afghan gov’t & all interested parties, the U.S. seeks to strengthen Afghan sovereignty, independence & prosperity.” 

Shortly after Khalilzad’s tweets, the Taliban issued their own statement, saying the negotiations “revolving around the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and other vital issues saw progress.” 

 

“The policy of the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban] during talks was very clear — until the issue of withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan is agreed upon, progress in other issues is impossible,” the group noted.

But the issues under consideration are of “critical nature and needed comprehensive discussions,” the group said.

The Taliban added that the two sides would share details of the Doha meetings and receive guidance from their “respective leaderships” before they reconvened to discuss “unsolved” matters to find an “appropriate and effective solution.” The Taliban statement did not explain further.

Sources told VOA they believed the agreement on a conditional and limited withdrawal and cease-fire would give both sides an opportunity to test the waters “without taking too huge a political risk.” 

Pakistan takes credit 

 

Officials in Pakistan took full credit for persuading the Taliban to engage in the dialogue at the U.S. request.

“Pakistan’s success is that it has sincerely and faithfully diverted the recent positive environment and energy in its relations with the U.S. to the complete benefit of the Afghan peace process, and Afghanistan as a whole,” a senior official told VOA as the talks progressed in Doha.

Islamabad insists a peaceful Afghanistan is key to Pakistan’s future security and economic stability as well as those of the region in general. 

Pakistani officials believe any agreement at this stage will help bridge the trust gap between the U.S. and the Taliban and will “add much needed political capital” to Washington’s account to achieve the ultimate goal of peace in Afghanistan. This agreement may prove an important asset in later, more serious stages of negotiations, they said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s nascent government, which has made resolution of the Afghan conflict its top foreign policy priority, sees continued U.S. involvement in Afghanistan reconstruction as key to the future security and economic stability of the region.

“This political reconciliation must succeed. … We wish that the U.S. leaves Afghanistan as friend of the region, not as a failure,” Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor stated prior to the Doha talks.

Afghan president’s outburst 

It is not clear whether the Taliban have agreed to talk directly with President Ashraf Ghani’s national unity government in Afghanistan, an administration that critics say remains fragile, is marred with political controversies and suffers from “disunity.”

The Taliban have so far refused to engage with the Afghan government in a peace process, dismissing it as an illegitimate entity and an “American puppet.”

Speaking during the World Economic Forum this week in Davos, Ghani for the first time publicly criticized the Khalilzad-led peace effort and indicated the Afghan government might not accept any possible outcome of the Doha talks.

Ghani warned that any truce the U.S. signs with the Taliban must pave the way for direct talks between his government and the insurgents to decide all issues, including foreign troop withdrawal.

“There’s discussion, but this discussion needs to be shared back. A discussion that does not involve the region, we will not trust,” Ghani said when asked whether the talks in Qatar were nearing a breakthrough.

“If we don’t get all the pieces right, one piece alone doesn’t suffice,” he added. 

During his interaction, Ghani also revealed that since he took office in late 2014, Afghan security forces have lost more than 45,000 personnel while battling the Taliban. The United Nations continues to document record levels of civilian casualties in its annual reports. Millions of others have been made refugees within Afghanistan, and the warfare discourages many more from returning from refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.

Aside from the humanitarian consequences of the fighting, it has cost the United States nearly $1 trillion while its military has lost nearly 2,500 personnel. The presence of 14,000 American soldiers means Washington will continue to pay around $45 billion annually to sustain operations if peace talks fail to produce desired results.

An American university research report released late last year noted that the Afghan war had killed about 150,000 people, including government forces, insurgents, U.S. and personnel of the NATO-led coalition. The U.S.-led military invasion stemmed from terrorist attacks on American cities in September 2001 that were plotted by al-Qaida, allegedly out of its bases in Afghanistan.  
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The Associated Press has found that researchers who reported the role of Israeli spyware in the targeting of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s inner circle are in turn being targeted by international undercover operatives. 

Twice in the past two months men masquerading as socially conscious investors have lured members of the Citizen Lab internet watchdog group to meetings at luxury hotels to quiz them for hours about their work exposing Israeli surveillance.

Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert on Friday described the stunts as “a new low.”

Who these operatives are working for remains a riddle, but their tactics recall those of private investigators who assume elaborate false identities to gather intelligence or compromising material on critics of powerful figures in government or business.

Full story

The researchers who reported that Israeli software was used to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s inner circle before his gruesome death are being targeted in turn by international undercover operatives, The Associated Press has found. 

Twice in the past two months, men masquerading as socially conscious investors have lured members of the Citizen Lab internet watchdog group to meetings at luxury hotels to quiz them for hours about their work exposing Israeli surveillance and the details of their personal lives. In both cases, the researchers believe they were secretly recorded.

Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert described the stunts as “a new low.”

“We condemn these sinister, underhanded activities in the strongest possible terms,” he said in a statement Friday. “Such a deceitful attack on an academic group like the Citizen Lab is an attack on academic freedom everywhere.”

Who these operatives are working for remains a riddle, but their tactics recall those of private investigators who assume elaborate false identities to gather intelligence or compromising material on critics of powerful figures in government or business.

A leading role

Citizen Lab, based out of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, has for years played a leading role in exposing state-backed hackers operating in places as far afield as Tibet, Ethiopia and Syria. Lately the group has drawn attention for its repeated exposes of an Israeli surveillance software vendor called the NSO Group, a firm whose wares have been used by governments to target journalists in Mexico , opposition figures in Panama and human rights activists in the Middle East.

In October, Citizen Lab reported that an iPhone belonging to one of Khashoggi’s confidantes had been infected by the NSO’s signature spy software only months before Khashoggi’s grisly murder. The friend, Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz, would later claim that the hacking had exposed Khashoggi’s private criticisms of the Saudi royal family to the Arab kingdom’s spies and thus “played a major role” in his death.

In a statement, NSO denied having anything to do with the undercover operations targeting Citizen Lab, “either directly or indirectly” and said it had neither hired nor asked anyone to hire private investigators to pursue the Canadian organization. “Any suggestion to the contrary is factually incorrect and nothing more than baseless speculation,” NSO said.

NSO has long denied that its software was used to target Khashoggi, although it has refused to comment when asked whether it has sold its software to the Saudi government more generally.

The first message reached Bahr Abdul Razzak, a Syrian refugee who works as a Citizen Lab researcher, Dec. 6, when a man calling himself Gary Bowman got in touch via LinkedIn. The man described himself as a South African financial technology executive based in Madrid.

“I came across your profile and think that the work you’ve done helping Syrian refugees and your extensive technical background could be a great fit for our new initiative,” Bowman wrote.

Abdul Razzak said he thought the proposal was a bit odd, but he eventually agreed to meet the man at Toronto’s swanky Shangri-La Hotel on the morning of Dec. 18. 

The conversation got weird very quickly, Abdul Razzak said.

Instead of talking about refugees, Abdul Razzak said, Bowman grilled him about his work for Citizen Lab and its investigations into the use of NSO’s software. Abdul Razzak said Bowman appeared to be reading off cue cards, asking him if he was earning enough money and throwing out pointed questions about Israel, the war in Syria and Abdul Razzak’s religiosity.

“Do you pray?” Abdul Razzak recalled Bowman asking. “Why do you write only about NSO?” “Do you write about it because it’s an Israeli company?” “Do you hate Israel?” 

Shaken after meeting

Abdul Razzak said he emerged from the meeting feeling shaken. He alerted his Citizen Lab colleagues, who quickly determined that the breakfast get-together had been a ruse. Bowman’s supposed Madrid-based company, FlameTech, had no web presence beyond a LinkedIn page, a handful of social media profiles and an entry in the business information platform Crunchbase. A reverse image search revealed that the profile picture of the man listed as FlameTech’s chief executive, Mauricio Alonso, was a stock photograph. 

“My immediate gut feeling was: `This is a fake,”‘ said John Scott-Railton, one of Abdul Razzak’s colleagues.

Scott-Railton flagged the incident to the AP, which confirmed that FlameTech was a digital facade.

Searches of the Orbis database of corporate records, which has data on some 300 million global companies, turned up no evidence of a Spanish firm called FlameTech or Flame Tech or any company anywhere in the world matching its description. 

No records

Similarly, the AP found no record of FlameTech in Madrid’s official registry or of a Gary Bowman in the city’s telephone listings. An Orbis search for Alonso, the supposed chief executive, also drew a blank. When an AP reporter visited Madrid’s Crystal Tower high-rise, where FlameTech claimed to have 250 sq. meters (2,700 sq. feet) of office space, he could find no trace of the firm and calls to the number listed on its website went unanswered.

The AP was about to publish a story about the curious company when, on Jan. 9, Scott-Railton received an intriguing message of his own.

This time the contact came not from Bowman of FlameTech but from someone who identified himself as Michel Lambert, a director at the Paris-based agricultural technology firm CPW-Consulting.

Lambert had done his homework. In his introductory email , he referred to Scott-Railton’s early doctoral research on kite aerial photography — a mapping technique using kite-mounted cameras — and said he was “quite impressed.”

“We have a few projects and clients coming up that could significantly benefit from implementing Kite Aerial Photography,” he said.

Like FlameTech, CPW-Consulting was a fiction. Searches of Orbis and the French commercial court registry Infogreffe turned up no trace of the supposedly Paris-based company or indeed of any Paris-based company bearing the acronym CPW. And when the AP visited CPW’s alleged office there was no evidence of the company; the address was home to a mainly residential apartment building. Residents and the building’s caretaker said they had never heard of the firm.

Whoever dreamed up CPW had taken steps to ensure the illusion survived a casual web search, but even those efforts didn’t bear much scrutiny. The company had issued a help wanted ad, for example, seeking a digital mapping specialist for their Paris office, but Scott-Railton discovered that the language had been lifted almost word-for-word from an ad from an unrelated company seeking a mapping specialist in London. A blog post touted CPW as a major player in Africa, but an examination of the author’s profile suggests the article was the only one the blogger had ever written.

When Lambert suggested an in-person meeting in New York during a Jan. 19 phone call , Scott-Railton felt certain that Lambert was trying to set him up.

But Scott-Railton agreed to the meeting. He planned to lay a trap of his own. 

Anyone watching Scott-Railton and Lambert laughing over wagyu beef and lobster bisque at the Peninsula Hotel’s upscale restaurant on Thursday afternoon might have mistaken the pair for friends. 

Spy vs. Spy

In fact, the lunch was Spy vs. Spy. Scott-Railton had spent the night before trying to secret a homemade camera into his tie, he later told AP, eventually settling for a GoPro action camera and several recording devices hidden about his person. On the table, Lambert had placed a large pen in which Scott-Railton said he spotted a tiny camera lens peeking out from an opening in the top. 

Lambert didn’t seem to be alone. At the beginning of the meal, a man sat behind him, holding up his phone as if to take pictures and then abruptly left the restaurant, having eaten nothing. Later, two or three men materialized at the bar and appeared to be monitoring proceedings. 

Scott-Railton wasn’t alone either. A few tables away, two Associated Press journalists were making small talk as they waited for a signal from Scott-Railton, who had invited the reporters to observe the lunch from nearby and then interview Lambert near the end of the meal.

The conversation began with a discussion of kites, gossip about African politicians, and a detour through Scott-Railton’s family background. But Lambert, just like Bowman, eventually steered the talk to Citizen Lab and NSO. 

“Work drama? Tell me, I like drama!” Lambert said at one point, according to Scott-Railton’s recording of the conversation. “Is there a big competition between the people inside Citizen Lab?” he asked later.

Working off cue cards

Like Bowman, Lambert appeared to be working off cue cards and occasionally made awkward conversational gambits. At one point he repeated a racist French expression, insisting it wasn’t offensive. He also asked Scott-Railton questions about the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and whether he grew up with any Jewish friends. At another point he asked whether there might not be a “racist element” to Citizen Lab’s interest in Israeli spyware. 

After dessert arrived, the AP reporters approached Lambert at his table and asked him why his company didn’t seem to exist.

He seemed to stiffen.

“I know what I’m doing,” Lambert said, as he put his files — and his pen — into a bag. Then he stood up, bumped into a chair and walked off, saying “Ciao” and waving his hand, before returning because he had neglected to pay the bill. 

As he paced around the restaurant waiting for the check, Lambert refused to answer questions who he worked for or why no trace of his firm could be found.

“I don’t have to give you any explanation,” he said. He eventually retreated to a back room and closed the door.

Who Lambert and Bowman really are isn’t clear. Neither men returned emails, LinkedIn messages or phone calls. And despite their keen focus on NSO the AP has found no evidence of any link to the Israeli spyware merchant, which is adamant that it wasn’t involved.

The kind of aggressive investigative tactics used by the mystery men who targeted Citizen Lab have come under fire in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal. Black Cube, an Israeli private investigation firm apologized after The New Yorker and other media outlets revealed that the company’s operatives had used subterfuge and dirty tricks to help the Hollywood mogul suppress allegations of rape and sexual assault. 

Steered toward controversial comments?

Scott-Railton and Abdul Razzak said they didn’t want to speculate about who was involved. But both said they believed they were being steered toward making controversial comments that could be used to blacken Citizen Lab’s reputation.

“It could be they wanted me to say, Yes, I hate Israel,' orYes, Citizen Lab is against NSO because it’s Israeli,”‘ said Abdul Razzak.

Scott-Railton said the elaborate, multinational operation was gratifying, in a way.

“People were paid to fly to a city to sit you down to an expensive meal and try to convince you to say bad things about your work, your colleagues and your employer,” he said. 

“That means that your work is important.”  
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Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort will try to convince a U.S. judge on Friday their client did not breach his plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a hearing that could lead to a longer prison sentence.

Mueller’s office in November accused Manafort of violating his agreement to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The special counsel said Manafort, 69, repeatedly lied to federal investigators on at least five different subjects ranging from his contacts with Trump administration officials in 2018 to his interactions with his former business partner in Ukraine Konstantin Kilimnik, who Mueller’s office has said has

ties to Russian intelligence.

The hearing gives Manafort’s attorneys a chance to persuade U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson that the veteran political consultant, who earned millions of dollars in work for Ukraine’s former pro-Russia president, did not breach the plea arrangement. If Jackson finds he did, Manafort could face a much steeper prison term.

Manafort’s attorneys in a court filing on Wednesday said he had difficulty recalling “certain facts and events,” but did not intentionally provide false information to the special counsel.

Jackson ordered Manafort to attend the high-stakes hearing, denying his request to skip it, but ruled he can wear a suit, rather than a prison uniform.

Some of the details about Mueller’s accusations about Manafort’s lying were made public inadvertently by his defense lawyers in a Jan. 8 court filing.

Prosecutors said Manafort lied about sharing election polling data with Kilimnik, about his discussions with Kilimnik concerning a “Ukrainian peace plan”

and about a meeting the two had in Madrid.

Kilimnik, who has denied ties to Russian intelligence, was indicted by Mueller in June 2018 on obstruction of justice charges.

Manafort pleaded guilty in September 2018 in a federal court in Washington to attempted witness tapering and conspiring against the United States, a charge covering conduct including money laundering and unregistered lobbying. He was convicted separately by a jury in Alexandria, Virginia in August 2018 of

bank and tax fraud in a parallel case also brought by Mueller.

The Virginia case alone could bring Manafort up to 10 years in prison for the eight guilty counts, according to sentencing experts. Sentencing in that case is scheduled for Feb. 8.

Mueller, a former FBI director, is investigating whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow and whether the president unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Russia has denied election interference. Trump has denied collusion with Moscow.

 
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Two new reports came out this month highlighting the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile the White House continues with plans to hold another summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un. Experts warn that this summit must produce more substance than the first. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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