Splinter groups complicate quest for peace

"I am very pessimistic," said Moeed Yusuf of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.

He warns that Afghanistan seems poised to repeat the devastation of the early 1990s after the Soviet withdrawal. At that time, rival rebel factions previously united against the Soviets turned their guns on each other, killing tens of thousands of civilians and paving the way for the Taliban takeover.

As more decision-makers emerge on the scene, it is becoming more difficult to secure a peace deal that can withstand the test of time, Yusuf said. "Whatever peace you come up with, I believe it is not sustainable, and I believe we are probably going to see a repeat of the 1990s, where you go for a few years and then it all starts to fall apart," he said.

The United States began the clandestine talks with the Taliban last year, aided by Germany and secretly held in Qatar. A senior U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the goal for Marc Grossman, Washington's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was straightforward: Get an Afghan peace deal.

In the last six months, the Taliban has had increasingly violent clashes with a militant Islamist group called Hezb-e-Islami, led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. That fighting escalated to all-out war in some parts of Afghanistan.

Hekmatyar is a former American ally who is now on Washington's wanted list. The Taliban worries that Hekmatyar's group, which is close to the government of President Hamid Karzai and has held parallel talks with the Americans, will make its own peace deal.