Taliban feel political power within grasp

Bolstered by summer success on the battlefield and gambling their military force could have peaked, Taliban leaders have come to the bargaining table in Kabul confident of trading up toward their ultimate goal: Political power.

“The Taliban are obsessed by the state. But they are not revolutionary in the international sense. They don’t want to take control of the whole world, just Kabul,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and renowned expert on Afghanistan.