According to a Wall Street Journal article released a few days ago, the United States is pressuring the Afghan government to make the presidential elections, which should be held in April 2019, postponed. The article, which cites indiscretions and comments by prominent figures related to Kabul, has given rise to a real hornet in the geopolitical area but very little surprise among analysts and observers. The US move, which appears in total disregard of all that strenuously pursued up to now by Washington and the West all, the return of democracy in Afghanistan, would be part of a broader strategy aimed at finally and forever closing, after seventeen years, the longest war fought in modern times. To the special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad the White House would have given a mandate of only six months to untangle a skein that now seems inextricable. And Khalilzad is not wasting time. The Taliban said they met the US special envoy last month, and that the talks were 'productive' even though no date was set for further talks. Washington has not confirmed, but there is no need. Behind the scenes, and behind the particularly aggressive military campaign of the last months of the Taliban that now hold more than half the country hostage, things are moving at a dizzying pace. Think-thank and various United Nations agencies organize meetings more or less reserved at a fast pace, the Taliban offices in Qatar have never been so popular and the last meeting held in Moscow proved fruitful despite the United States did not officially sit down at the negotiating table and officially the parties have declared that there has been no substantial progress. Yet for the Russians, it was a diplomatic triumph that, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared, aims to "Open, through the joint efforts of all, a new page in Afghan history". In Moscow, a Taliban delegation went, but not one from the Kabul government, which only sent representatives of the High Peace Council, a non-governmental organization accredited by the Taliban. Translation: even the Russians, who in September had postponed the meeting due to the lack of official representatives of Kabul, as the Americans accepted the demands of the jihadi: who have always refused to speak with what they call the 'puppet government' of Ghani and Abdullah. The Taliban obtained a first result, in addition to starting negotiations without preconditions, that is to speak directly with the Americans: at this point they would like to conclude the agreement by entrusting an interim government with the management of Afghanistan to organize, in the meantime, a peace conference on the genre of the Bonn conference (which was held in 2001, and then in 2011). The Taliban would also take part in the conference, and the elections should therefore be postponed until the end of the promised peace agreement. That is, until the time when the Taliban themselves could officially return to the Afghan political scene and participate in the elections. If then, once the Taliban officially resettled in Kabul, the elections will be held, it's a whole other story but at this point the Americans do not seem to care that much. The will of Trump, but also of all the other parts at stake, to do away with an endless war, is evident now for months: because if it is true that there are still no agreements on the withdrawal of US troops from Kabul and surroundings It is also true that the Taliban leadership and the office in Qatar are closing the ranks and forming a real task force able to deal both diplomatically and with the militants in the field. Five Taliban commanders released in 2014 by Guantanamo in exchange for an American army officer, joined the Doha office. And Pakistan, probably convinced by the Chinese and the Russians or in exchange for favorable treatment by the IMF, will be understood later, released Mullah Baradar months ago and a few days ago three other senior ranks of the Afghan Taliban. The diplomatic negotiation with the West, in fact, is only part of the problem: because the representatives who sit in Qatar do not actually represent all the forces in the field on the side of jihadi and various fighters and it is said that, in the aftermath of agreement, Afghanistan will be automatically pacified. Rather. Now the fighting factions are many, too many, and they obey several masters: Russia, Iran, Pakistan, just to name names. Masters who often play on multiple tables, like Pakistan, which funds both the Afghan Taliban and some groups of their opponents. It is not certain that the peace between the Allies and the Taliban, once signed, will reveal itself to Afghans as absence of war.Francesca Marino