Despite a recent Taliban attack on a base of Afghanistan’s army in which at least 25 Afghan soldiers were killed, the US and Taliban on Saturday resumed peace negotiations in Doha.

On Friday, a Taliban spokesman spoke of progress, elaborating that “[t]he technical groups are working on the details of a draft agreement about troop pullout from Afghanistan, and also that Afghanistan’s soil must not be a haven for anyone to use it against other countries. We have moved the agreement forward, but we have not completed it.”

The US-Taliban efforts to end the war that has been going on for 17 years are fraught with difficulties. In addition to all the local considerations, the process may also be disrupted by regional factors, in particular by the heightened tensions in Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The US is therefore actively attempting to prevent the Kashmir situation from impacting the talks.

Read more: U.S. and Taliban Talks Progress Despite Attacks and Regional Tensions