Iqbal Khan
Apparently a false perception is being created about return of peace and normalcy in Afghanistan. President Donald Trump wants to use this aura to effect a symbolic withdrawal from Afghanistan towards end of his current term. And after winning the next term, he could reverse the decision. President Ashraf Ghani has been declared winner in the controversial elections held in September 2019. His competitor Abdullah Abdullah has refused to accept the results and has vowed to launch armed struggle to undo the outcome. With notorious warlord Abdul Rasheed Dostum on his side, Abdullah Abdullah could be the upcoming spoiler in chief. So one wonders whether there is anything like peaceful Afghanistan in the calculus of occupation forces.
Since 2018, the United States had ramped up military pressure to push the Taliban to a settled negotiation. Apparently while the US and Taliban were nearing an agreement to end the war. The US warplanes did not relented in keeping pressure on the militant groups. Year 2020 began with a near record number of munitions released by American warplanes for the month of January in nearly a decade. Warplanes dropped 415 bombs in January, just slightly under the 10-year high of 463 munitions released in January 2019. US aircraft dropped 378 munitions in January. However, despite the high tempo of the conflict, neither pro-government forces nor anti-government elements achieved significant territorial gains. The airstrike for January were high, considering winter months often see a lull in fighting. 2019 and 2020 are the first two years since 2011 that American warplanes have dropped more than 400 bombs in Afghanistan during the month of January. In 2011, the US had nearly 100,000 troops on the ground as part of President Barack Obama’s troop surge to rout Taliban militants. US aircraft only released 54 munitions in 2017 for the month of January. January munitions releases are often under 200. Only four years out of the last decade, coalition aircraft in Afghanistan released more than 200 munitions during the month of January.
The US has secured a seven-day ‘reduction in violence’ truce with Taliban to help seek a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defence Mark Esper said on February 14. Concurrently, a Taliban official said that the group would begin a “reduction of violence” on February 22. The New York Times has reported that President Donald Trump had given conditional approval to a deal with the Taliban to allow him to start withdrawing US troops. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has expressed cautious optimism in the truce.
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said on February 11 that he is “cautiously optimistic that there could be a US agreement with the Taliban over the next days or weeks”, but a withdrawal of American forces is not “imminent.”
Violence has skyrocketed in Afghanistan as the US has opted for the hammer to push the Taliban to make a deal and reduce hostilities in the country. Six US service members have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of 2020, including these two casualties. Last year, 20 US service personnel died in combat and there were two non-combat deaths. A recent UN report detailed that during September 2019, following President Donald Trump’s decision to temporarily halt peace talks with the militant group, there were 2,780 recorded “security incidents” —a 44 percent increase viz a viz September 2018. Increased violence also came as Afghans headed to presidential polls to vote on September 28, 2019. Both Taliban-led and insider attacks spiked following the breakdown of peace talks.
A December 2019 Defence Department report cautioned that “sustained levels of violence” and Afghan security force casualties on the battlefield was impacting attrition and “outpacing recruitment and retention.” The endless marathon of peace talks to end the war has precipitated a tit-for-tat escalation in violence between Taliban and US and Afghan forces resulting in one of the bloodiest years of the conflict.
Reconstruction and stabilization activities in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2018 have resulted in thousands of casualties, including hundreds of American deaths. “Unless the US Government considers the human costs, the true costs of reconstruction and stabilization efforts in Afghanistan are not accurately captured,” a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said.
Altogether, the report “conservatively” tracked 5,135 casualties in Afghanistan derived from reconstruction and stabilization activities: 2,214 deaths and 2,921 injuries. This casualties figure did not take into account those from combat and counter-terrorism missions, nor did it factor in casualties from natural causes or accidents. There have been more than 2,400 US military deaths since the US military got involved in Afghanistan in 2001.
The “reduction in violence” agreement would bind the Taliban and US forces to refrain from conducting attacks or combat operations for seven days. “I think that we’re making significant progress,” O’Brien said at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington. “You hate to make predictions when it comes to Afghanistan … but I’ll say that we’re cautiously optimistic that some good news could be forthcoming on that front”, he added.
If a reduction in violence holds, the US and Taliban would be expected to sign an agreement to begin talks within 10 days involving the Taliban and Afghans from across the nation, including some who hold government positions but don’t represent the government. Taliban continue to refuse talking to the Afghan government.
O’Brien added: “The president had made it very clear that there will have to be a reduction in violence and there will have to be meaningful intra-Afghan talks for things to move forward. “If both those things and a number of other conditions are met and we are able to get agreement on them, I think we could have some good news coming out of Afghanistan”. The other conditions include the Taliban pledging not to associate with al-Qaida, the Islamic State or other such organizations.
According to SIGAR findings, Afghan security forces averaged one insider attack every 4 days in the closing months of 2019. Members of Afghanistan’s security forces turned their weapons on each other every four days on average during the closing months of 2019. Afghan National Defence and Security Forces personnel carried out 33 insider attacks during the fourth quarter of 2019, resulting in 90 casualties. ADNSF personnel carried out a total of 82 insider attacks in 2019, resulting in 172 deaths and 85 injuries. In one major incident, a Taliban infiltrator killed 23 Afghan National Army soldiers in their sleep at a military base in Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province in December 2019, the New York Times reported. Specifically, the report cited an insider attack from 2011 where an Afghan Air Force Colonel Ahmed Gul killed eight US airmen and an American contractor in Kabul. This sustained violence and rising casualties among the ranks of Afghan forces “contributed to ANDSF attrition outpacing recruitment and retention,” according to a December 2019 report to Congress.
Special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been meeting with Taliban representatives in Doha, and elsewhere, seeking an agreement to reduce hostilities to get a peace deal signed that would start negotiations among Afghans on both sides of the conflict. Since the Afghan government has been excluded from the US negotiations with the Taliban, it will have no say on whether the US leaves some troops in Afghanistan as part of a counter-terrorism force or if it ends its military presence in the country entirely.
United States’ 2021 military budget request for Afghanistan is lowest in a decade, it “assumes a drawdown of forces. “It remains unclear why the US is so desperate to quit Afghanistan that it would agree to a peace deal with the Taliban that does not include a lasting nation-wide ceasefire.
