As they did on the battlefield, the Taliban outlasted the U.S. at the negotiating table
On the day he was to begin peace talks with the Trump administration in the fall of 2018, Taliban co-founder and senior leader Abdul Ghani Baradar found himself in a luxury villa at a Qatari resort. His uncovered windows overlooked the swimming pool, where bikini-clad women lay in the Persian Gulf sun.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born U.S. diplomat negotiating for the administration, noted the scene when he showed up to greet Baradar, who had recently been released from years of imprisonment in Pakistan. It was, Khalilzad said lightly in the Pashto language they shared, a vision of heaven.
Baradar quickly walked to the windows and closed the curtains. It was time to begin.
Less than 18 months later, after what President Donald Trump called “very successful negotiations,” Baradar and Khalilzad struck a deal to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan with the full withdrawal of U.S. troops. After another year and a half, under the same agreement but a different U.S. president, the last American forces made a hasty, chaotic exit, leaving the Taliban in full charge of the country.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as-they-did-on-the-battlefield-the-taliban-outlasted-the-us-at-the-negotiating-table/ar-AAO6q2z
But he's Mr. Art of the Deal.