The U. S. defense secretary, making his first visit since March, was expected to meet with President Ashraf Ghani to discuss negotiations with the Taliban.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit Friday, in the midst of a push by the Trump administration to restart peace talks with the Taliban.
Mr. Mattis was joined in Kabul, the capital, by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., and was met by the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin Scott Miller, ahead of a planned meeting with President Ashraf Ghani. Apache helicopter gunships circled the American Embassy and the U. S.-led coalition’s military headquarters for a half-hour as the delegation arrived.
Haroon Chakhansuri, a spokesman for Mr. Ghani, confirmed the officials’ arrival. “Details will be shared later,” he said.
The defense secretary has recently expressed hope that the long-moribund peace process could be restarted. Talking to reporters aboard his plane as he flew to India on Wednesday, Mr. Mattis said the American Embassy in Kabul had dedicated more staff to working on reconciliation with the Taliban.
“We have more indications that reconciliation is no longer just a shimmer out there, no longer just a mirage,” Mr. Mattis said. “It now has some framework, there’s some open lines of communication.”
That appeared to be an indirect acknowledgment of a July meeting between a senior State Department official and Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar. The State Department’s senior South Asia diplomat, Alice Wells, participated, according to Taliban officials.
That meeting marked a departure from an earlier insistence by the United States that any peace talks should begin between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The insurgents have insisted they would only negotiate with the Americans, dismissing the Afghan government as a “puppet regime.”
Despite the new approach, American officials have insisted that the peace process would still be “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led.”
President Ghani recently appointed Hamdullah Mohib, a computer expert who had been Afghanistan’s ambassador in Washington but has little security experience, to be his new national security adviser, a cabinet position.
Mr. Mattis’s visit was his first to Afghanistan since March. He has been instrumental in persuading President Trump to resist calls by Republican Party populists to pull out of Afghanistan and instead give commanders the latitude to increase their troop levels here, which they have done on a modest scale.
There are now 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan, about 4,000 more than last year. During the peak of the American involvement during the Obama administration, there were 140,000 coalition troops there.
The defense secretary, in his remarks Wednesday, said the insurgents’ recent attacks were “not militarily significant other than the tragedy of killing innocent women and children.” He said there was increasing interest in reconciliation. “The State Department has put additional staff into the embassy with that sole effort. You’re seeing this now pick up traction,” Mr. Mattis said.
The insurgents last month overran the strategic city of Ghazni for six days, killing hundreds of Afghan soldiers and policemen in attacks throughout the country.
While the Taliban insurgents have said they will no longer deliberately target civilians, Islamic State extremists in the country have continued to do so. They have carried out series of deadly attacks in Kabul, most recently on Wednesday when a double bombing killed 25 people, including two journalists.
