Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar speaks with The Associated Press in Kabul, Oct. 24, 2015. VOA
"They [Taliban] neither rejected nor accepted our offer yet," Atmar told VOA. "If they [Taliban] need more time, they can have it. However, they [Taliban] should be aware that each day by choosing to fight, they cut a day from peace."
P.J. Crowley, former assistant secretary for Public Affairs and spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State during Obama administration said the Taliban taking time to respond is not unprecedented.
"Going back to the process in the early stages of the Obama administration, there was months at a time where we had to determine if Taliban representation was authoritative," Crowley said.
"The fact that there would be a conversation and then there would be a lengthy period before we got an indication that there was a response or that there were actions that led us to believe that Taliban were serious, those steps took a long time," Crowley added.
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Informal response
The Taliban did respond to a letter published in The New Yorker magazine by Barnett Rubin, an Afghan expert and associate director at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, in which Rubin urged the Afghan Taliban to accept ceasefire and talks with the Afghan government.
Without explicitly referring to the peace offer, the insurgent group offered a rather cold response arguing that Afghanistan was "occupied" and that the Kabul Process was seeking the "surrender" of the Taliban.
Speaking to VOA, Rubin said it is not about whether the Taliban want to talk or not, but rather about who they want to talk to and about what.
"U.S. says talk to the Afghan government. Taliban say they [Afghan government] are not the decision makers. That is not who overthrew us. It is the Americans. We [Taliban] want to talk to the Americans. It is pointless to talk to other Afghans until we [Taliban] solve our problems with the Americans," Rubin said.
"So it is not talks verses no talks. It is whom do they talk to and about what," Rubin added.
Thomas H. Johnson, author of the book "Taliban Narratives" and director of the cultural and conflict studies program at the Naval Post Graduate School echoes Rubin's assessment that Taliban views Washington as the real power and wants to talk to the U.S.
"This position also corresponds with their narrative they have suggested since the beginning of the conflict and also served as an explicit informational response to Trump's suggestion that the U.S. will not negotiate with the Taliban," Johnson said.
