Taliban vows future Afghanistan won't be terrorists' hotbed

America's longest war has come full circle.

The United States began bombing Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to root out al-Qaida fighters harbored by the Taliban.

Now, more than 18 years later, preventing Afghanistan from being a launching pad for more attacks on America is at the heart of ongoing US talks with the Taliban.

President Donald Trump's envoy at the negotiating table says he's satisfied with the Taliban's commitment to prevent international terrorist organizations from using Afghanistan as a base to plot global attacks.

There's even talk that a negotiated settlement might result in the Taliban joining the U.S. to fight Islamic State militants, rivals whose footprint is growing in mountainous northern Afghanistan.

"The world needs to be sure that Afghanistan will not be a threat to the international community," said the envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan and is a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

"We are satisfied with the commitment that we have received (from the Taliban) on counterterrorism." Not everyone is convinced.

Some Afghans worry that Trump's desire to pull American troops from Afghanistan will override doubts about the Taliban's sincerity.

Early in the talks, Hamdullah Mohib, national security adviser to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, said counting on the Taliban to control other militants could be like "having cats guard the milk."
A U.N. Security Council report in April 2018 said al-Qaida was "closely allied with and embedded within the Taliban."
The Taliban has the upper hand now. There are no incentives to denounce its closest ally." A U.S. intelligence official based in Kabul, the
The official said "one of the hopes of a negotiated settlement is that it will bring the Taliban into the government and into the fight against IS."
He says only that the "U.S. military withdrawal will be linked to the commitments the Taliban are making."
"He's not going into the discussions naively and taking them at their word," Dempsey said. "He's in discussions on putting in place verification and enforcement and implementation guarantees. We're not there yet."