Making love,in wait for peace,in Qatar

Three years after that secret arrival,the Taliban officials remain idle and their political office in Qatar remains unused.

They are just living here enjoying the air-conditioning,driving luxury cars,eating and making babies, one Afghan diplomat in Qatar said. Its all they can do.

They are unlikely to see a negotiating table anytime soon either,with the new fighting season in Afghanistan off to a particularly violent start and with the latest push to restart talks all but abandoned. Once again,the Talibans attention is on the battlefield,and on what may be gained or lost there as the US military begins its withdrawal.

The Taliban presence hereeight or more relatively high-ranking officials with their familiesis occasionally reconfirmed in a sighting on the streets or,in the case of the Afghan diplomat,when the Taliban men come to the sleepy Afghan Embassy here to register the birth of another child.

Early insurgent negotiations with US officials had a faltering start,initially over a proposed prisoner exchange,in which five Taliban figures being held at Guantanamo Bay,Cuba,would be released in exchange for the lone US soldier being held prisoner by the Taliban,Sgt Bowe Bergdahl. But US officials say that their talks have ended and that there have been no further discussions with the Taliban since early 2012.

Recently,Western diplomats in Kabul expressed hope that they might resume amid intense diplomatic activity,this time led by Afghanistan. The hope is that this office opens and you actually have a Nixon-to-China meeting, a Western diplomat said last month.

That hope now appears to have fizzled once again,and diplomats expectations of some movement by the end of March from the Taliban side have come to naught. President Hamid Karzai met here with the Qatari emir,Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani,on March 31 in what Afghan officials billed as discussions about opening the office,but no developments were announced after the meeting.

Officially,the Qataris have never explicitly admitted that the Taliban are even present here,although they have acknowledged that they are willing to host an official office for peace talks. Qatari officials did not respond to requests for comment about the Taliban presence.

With the Taliban,the Qataris have a hot potato, said an Afghan journalist in Doha,who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being expelled. How do you handle hosting suicide bombers? They cant acknowledge them until that sort of activity stops.

The Taliban representatives here are not lightweights. The most prominent is Tayeb Agha,the chief of staff to the Talibans leader,Mullah Omar,and others include Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai,the former Taliban health minister,and Qari din Mohammed Hanafi,their former minister of planning. The delegation also includes veteran diplomats like Mualavi Shahabadin Delawar,the former Taliban ambassador to Saudi Arabia; Sohail Shaheen,a former ambassador to Pakistan; and Hafiz Aziz Rahman,the representative to the United Nations for the Taliban government when it ruled Afghanistan.

Just why the effort to open a Taliban office has faltered is a matter of dispute. The Americans say the Taliban have simply decided to continue fighting,worried by pressure from their own hardliners and concerned that entering peace talks would sap their will on the battlefield. No one wants to be the last one to die before peace talks start, as one diplomat put it.

The Taliban say the Americans reneged on their confidence-building pledge to free the Guantanamo five,which would have been politically difficult for President Barack Obama. Instead,the Americans insisted that talks would have to include the Afghan government first. The Taliban has rejected that condition,deriding Karzais government as a puppet regime and saying it would only talk to the Afghan government after reaching a settlement with the Americans.

Still,neither Western diplomats nor the Taliban have given up on the idea of talks in Qatar. They also publicly agree on one thing: That they are no longer talking to each another,officially or unofficially.

While the Afghan government refuses to believe that,they have not tried to block the Qatari initiative. It suits everybody, said the Afghan journalist working in Doha. The Americans want their soldier back,the Taliban want a vacation,the Pakistanis want the Taliban to look independent of them,and the Afghans want distance between the Pakistanis and the Taliban.

While in Qatar,the Taliban have scrupulously avoided all public appearances,refusing interviews and issuing no statementswhich the Qataris have made a condition of their presence.

An Afghan diplomat was at a shopping mall in Doha recently and heard a child call out in Pashto,the language used by most Taliban.

The diplomat turned and saw Hanif din Mohammad,a Taliban representative from northern Badakhshan Province. Introducing himself as an embassy official,the diplomat then said,So,are you from the other side? Blushing,the Talib turned and walked away,children in tow.