History took a front seat at the table this month when Afghan enemies formally sat face to face for the first time to embark on negotiations to end what is now regarded as the world's deadliest conflict. "We'll start introductions on the left," suggested Masoom Stanikzai, the grey-bearded chief negotiator of the Afghan government's chosen delegation who only just survived a suicide attack nine years ago by bombers posing as messengers of peace. From the other long table, on the other side of the glittering Qatari ballroom, another Stanikzai of no relation loudly interjected with a grin. "You always do things from the left," chimed in the white-bearded deputy head of the Taliban team, Abbas Stanikzai. "We mujahideen start from the right always." In an instant, in these very first moments, would-be peacemakers were pulled back to days gone by when they brandished banners for communism or Islam - a violent war of words which sparked the Soviet invasion of 1979 and a fire which kills and maims across Afghanistan to this day. History has left its calling card in these talks which are as emotional as they are historic. Forty-two negotiators, one for every painful year of war, are now charged with the Herculean task of turning this page. Formal interviews and informal conversations over the first 10 days of talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, signalled both early signs of hopeful progress as well as significant and stubborn disagreements over visions of a post-war future which imperil this push towards peace. All the while, reports keep reaching negotiators from the Afghan battlefield thousands of miles away. But they're as close as ever-present phones with encrypted messaging services and social media posts seething with an anger and anguish, on both sides, and intensifying the pressure. The UN reports that civilian casualties are now at a lower level than in recent years. But on one day alone, four separate incidents killed 20 women, boys and girls and injured 39. The first task on the table has been formulating a "code of conduct", the rules and regulations to shepherd these talks. Some of an initial 23 points were swiftly settled - such as starting each session with a recitation of the holy Koran, ending with prayers, and treating each other with respect. But the Taliban immediately put bigger issues on the table - unsettling for the other side - including insistence that disputes be resolved within the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, one of four major schools of Sunni legal reasoning, without provisions for the Shia community as codified in the Afghan constitution. They also called for this set of talks to be subsumed within the US-Taliban deal signed in February. But, after a few days of stalemate and silence, progress was reported when "contact groups" from the two sides sat down again. And they wrestled with the significant semantics of what this is all about. The government team spoke of ending the "war". The Taliban wanted to see it as "problems". They inched towards a compromise with "conflict". Negotiators from Kabul, the capital, noticed that Taliban who sat at the table during the US-Taliban process - tough talks which took place over more than a year - learned skills which are helping break logjams now. "The fact that we continue discussing these issues for hours is a step forward," said Nader Nadery, spokesman for the government delegation. "We are focused on the task at hand: to end this war." "It's hoped that consensus will be reached on the remaining points," his Taliban counterpart, Dr Mohammad Naim, posted on his Twitter account, in English, Persian, and Pashto. "Patience" is the byword, always uttered with a knowing smile, by both Stanikzais whenever I ran into them, as they hurried to and fro in the sprawling beachside resort of white crenellated Arabian villas transformed, in part, into a negotiating hub.