Iqbal Khan
The US and Taliban representatives are claiming that they are at the threshold of peace agreement “that will reduce violence and open the door for Afghans to sit together to negotiate an honourable and sustainable peace”, according to US chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad; Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban’s Doha, also shared similar optimism: “We are on the verge of ending the invasion”.
The prospective deal centres on US troop reductions in return for several security guarantees from the Taliban, as well as broader peace talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government and an eventual ceasefire. “We have agreed that if the conditions proceed according to the agreement, we will leave within 135 days five bases in which we are present now,” Zalmay Khalilzad told Tolo News, on September 02.
A ceasefire in Afghanistan and exchange of prisoners is in the offing. The US has pledged to give a roadmap for phases-wise withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan. Both sides have agreed for total prisoner swap. “In the first phase, they agreed to withdraw a bigger number of troops, approximately 8000-10,000. And the remaining forces would be withdrawn as per agreement in more than a year,” the Taliban side has claimed. And soon after prisoners’ swap, Taliban would join the intra Afghan dialogue. The meeting between Taliban and Afghan leaders, is expected to be held in Oslo, Norway, most likely at the end of September. About the intra-Afghan dialogue, Taliban clarified saying they would not involve the Afghan government in the peace talks. “We made it clear that people sitting in the Afghan government can participate in the intra-Afghan dialogue but they would not represent the government.”
Also, about the ceasefire, Taliban said they have made it clear to the US in the peace talks that it would mean only between US and Taliban. “What they (US side) had agreed with us is we would not stop our fighting against the Afghan government and its armed forces. Also, we made it clear to them that we would immediately break the ceasefire if US forces came to the rescue of Afghan forces in their clashes with Taliban,” the Taliban leader claimed. Similarly, Taliban sources said they informed US negotiating team that they would neither participate in the Afghan presidential election nor let it happen.
Reportedly, the US wanted to avoid some of the decisions being mentioned in the peace accord. However, Taliban want all the decisions made in the peace talks to be part of the agreement.
As US-Afghanistan deal making approaches the finish, “misgivings have grown among some Trump administration officials and lawmakers that it will erode the United States’ ability to thwart attacks from there”, Reuters reported on August 31. To alley these apprehensions, President Donald Trump said he plans to keep 8,600 troops in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. “We’re going down to 8,600 and then we make a determination from there as to what happens,” Trump told Fox News radio repeating that the US “could win that war so fast, if I wanted to kill 10 million people … which I don’t.”
General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters: “I’m not using the withdraw word right now.” “It’s our judgment that the Afghans need support to deal with the level of violence” in the country today. He said it’s too early to talk about a full American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A meeting of Taliban leadership has reviewed the draft agreement. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted: “All the Shura (consultation) members have received the draft and they are reading it carefully, yet no go-ahead signal has been given to the Taliban negotiating team in Doha,” the Taliban official said.
Earlier President Donald Trump had confirmed that US officials were discussing withdrawal plans with both the Taliban and Afghanistan government officials. Trump had pledged to end the military mission in Afghanistan during his presidential campaign. Trump has made it clear that the United States “cannot allow Afghanistan to be made a laboratory for terrorism”. “That does seem to be the Harvard University of terrorism. “We’ll always have intelligence and we’ll always have someone there,” Trump said during an unscheduled press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on August 20.
And back in Kabul, in what became the deadliest attack in Afghanistan this year, a suicide-bomb blast killed at least 63 and injured over 180 at a wedding party in Kabul on August 17. This time Daesh boys did it. Afghan government vowed to crush Daesh havens as Afghans mourned the dead people, including harmless women and innocent children. Attack came at a difficult and complicated time for the country, keeping in view the US-Taliban peace talks. This Daesh attack does not only highlight the US failures in Afghanistan in terms of failing to defeat the Taliban, but also in terms of allowing other terrorist and militant groups, such as Daesh, to flourish in the country. Recent spate of terror attacks in Afghanistan has raised concerns and fears over the future security landscape of the country. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in its report, had also warned that the “Afghan government had weak oversight of security force units & their commanders in peripheral areas of Afghanistan”. In his recent report to the UNSG Antonio Guterres had said that “the lull in IS-directed international attacks “may be temporary” and that “Afghanistan remained the best-established conflict zone among those attracting foreign extremist fighters”.
According to Leo Shane III, Trump signalled that his preference would be a full withdrawal of American [military] personnel from the country, but “it’s a dangerous place, and we have to keep an eye on it.” However, he termed open-ended US military mission there “ridiculous”. “We’re not really fighting, we’re more of a police force … and we’re not supposed to be a police force,” Trump said.
Jim Golby in his August 17 analysis for The Atlantic captioned: “It Matters If Americans Call Afghanistan a Defeat”, aptly commented: “The public’s judgment about whether the United States won or lost the war will affect civilian-military relations for years to come”. A negotiated peace normally involves concessions by both sides, and can be characterized in multiple ways. A “stabbed in the back” narrative is a common cultural response among militaries that have failed to achieve their wartime goals.
Liz Cheney in her Gulf News opinion piece, captioned “Why Trump should reject the Afghan deal” recommends that: “The group [Taliban] has conducted daily attacks resulting in the deaths of Afghan civilians, US soldiers and our allies”.
Reuters reported on August 26 that “U.S. negotiators have been pressing the Taliban to agree to peace talks with the Kabul government and to a ceasefire, but a senior Taliban official said that would not happen”. However, preparations are being made for talks between the rival Afghan sides in Norway. A Taliban officials said. Expected deal envisages that US forces, will stop attacking the Taliban and the militants would end their fight against the US troops. And the United States would also cease supporting the Afghan government. However, special envoy has vowed to defend the Afghan forced even after the deal.
The signals emanating from various quarters are indeed confusing. The US may have a plan up in the sleeve to just put up a token façade of withdrawal while retaining or even enhancing the military capability. If this be the case then the US is certainly grossly under estimating the acumen of Taliban.
