Taliban delegates and representatives of the U.S.-backed Afghan republic gathered for a secret retreat in a château north of Paris in December 2012, raising hopes that a peace deal could end their intractable war.
The Taliban, whose fighters had been beaten back by President Obama’s troop surge, dined on pork-free French cuisine with Afghan warlords, civil-society activists and female parliamentarians. At a formal session in the Chantilly hideaway, the emissaries distributed a message on behalf of the movement’s founding leader, the one-eyed cleric Mullah Mohammad Omar.
