March 8, 2021
PANJWAI, Afghanistan For a brief moment in a small patch of southern Afghanistan, the war has stopped.
After weeks of negotiations, the mayor of Panjwai, a sizable district in the strategically important Kandahar Province, said a 10-day cease-fire would begin Sunday morning.
There was no formal announcement or major decree, nor was there any involvement from the international community. Instead, the cease-fire in Panjwai was the culmination of a grass-roots movement led by farmers and townspeople exhausted after more than 40 years of war and the recent escalation of fighting in their district.
Their success in brokering the cease-fire offered a clear example of how local communities, driven by despair, have engineered their own ways to stop the fighting even if it is just for a few hours as Afghan and Taliban negotiators continue to struggle to find a way forward during peace talks in Qatar.