Negotiations broke down in March after a failure to agree the fate of five insurgents, including three Taliban commanders, held in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. In return, an American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, was to have been freed by a Taliban affiliate, the Haqqani network, as part of a sequence of confidence-building measures leading to a ceasefire and broader talks between Kabul and the insurgency.

The collapse has been widely blamed on resistance in the US Congress and the Pentagon to allowing any Taliban prisoners to be released or transferred from Guantánamo. However, a senior administration official insisted the Obama administration had been ready to transfer the five prisoners to Qatar had the Taliban agreed to the conditions in Doha. The transfer would have required a “certification” from the defence secretary, Leon Panetta, guaranteeing to Congress that the Guantánamo inmates would not re-enter the fight against US troops…

However, the American official, in an unusually detailed account of the diplomatic effort, argued the breakdown had been caused largely by internal rifts within the insurgency.