Afghan laborers work on the exterior renovation of Darulaman Palace in Kabul on Aug. 8, 2019. As the United States looks to slowly stop funding Kabul, Afghanistan's leaders will need to find a way of raising more of their own funds.
Editor's Note : This assessment is part of a series of analyses supporting Stratfor's 2020 Annual Forecast. These assessments are designed to provide more context and in-depth analysis of key developments over the next quarter and throughout the year . A year ahead of the U.S. 2020 presidential election, Washington appears to have revived its latest attempt at a peace deal with the Taliban . On Nov. 28, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where he met his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, and addressed some of the roughly 12,000 U.S. troops serving in the country, just as American diplomats were busy meeting with Taliban officials in Qatar in a bid to rekindle formal negotiations that the president himself halted in September . On Dec. 7, U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad did, indeed, revive dialogue with the Taliban.
