Afia Ambreen
Recently, US-Taliban have signed an agreement after months of negotiations in Doha that is aimed at ending the United States’ longest war, fought in Afghanistan since 2001. The agreement, signed in Doha in the presence of leaders from Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, will pave the way for the US to gradually withdraw its troops. With the help of Pakistan, both parties have come to the agreement that the US will withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The United States and its allies will withdraw all their forces from Afghanistan within 14 months if the Taliban abide by an agreement due to be signed in Doha on S29th Feb, Washington and Kabul said in a joint statement.
The Taliban believe with good reason that the Americans have committed to securing the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 Afghan soldiers held by the Taliban before any intra-Afghan negotiations commence. They have termed as unsatisfactory the phased release that Ghani has proposed viz 1,500 before the talks commence and the remaining 3,500 to be released in batches of 500 every two weeks after the start of direct talks between the Taliban and a negotiating team appointed by the Afghan government, and the further condition that prisoners released provide a written pledge not to return to fighting.
The most important is the United States Afghanistan Security Forces Fund which is governed by a US-Afghan agreement and pays for equipping and running Afghanistan’s security forces. The ASFF was about $4.9 billion annually, reduced by a small sum as result of the detection of corruption in its use and also by a more recent Ghani proposal to decrease the total required for the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces by about $1bn from the current $6.5bn. This was to be the amount made available every year by the US and its allies up to 2024.
After an initial reduction of troops to 8,600 within 135 days of deal’s the US and its partners “will complete the withdrawal of their remaining forces from Afghanistan within 14 months… and will withdraw all their forces from remaining bases”, the declaration stated. As the talks between Washington and the Taliban have increased the possibility of a settlement in the Afghan conflict, behind the scenes, Pakistan, a state which has crucial ethnic and cultural ties with Afghanistan, has played a critical role in bringing the Taliban to the table. “Pakistan has been very consistent about the Taliban. Right after September 11, Pakistan kept telling Americans that there is a difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We must talk to the Taliban,” said Kamal Alam, a military analyst. Before the September 11 attacks, the Taliban was the ruling power in Kabul. In order to go after Al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan, and harbored by the Taliban leadership, Washington went to war with Kabul in 2001.
The US military eventually overthrew the Taliban-led government, replacing it with a pro Western alliance of political powers, which have not been on friendly terms with Pakistan. But nearly two decades later, Washington appears to be bogged down in a civil war in Afghanistan, where the Taliban controls much of the country. In the face of a growing Taliban reality on the ground, US President Donald Trump currently seeks a quick exit from the conflict. Now, Washington appears to recognize the validity of Pakistan’s Taliban argument, getting closer to a deal with the group’s leaders.
Pakistan has long said that the Taliban is different from international terrorism and the group should be part of the Afghan dialogue. Americans have finally agreed to this. Not because Americans like the Taliban, but because they are stuck after 19 years of failure. In this context, Khalilzad in his interview with TOLO news praised Pakistan, saying that “they encouraged the Taliban to sit at the negotiation table with the Afghan government” and that “they helped the Taliban to come from there [Pakistan] and pushed them in a meeting that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and we were in; they emphasized this and promised to cooperate in preparing the Taliban to sit at the negotiation table with the Afghan government”.
Pakistan has done well in conveying that Pakistan believes in reaching out to Afghanistan in furtherance of its policy of good neighborly relations with all countries of the region. As for the issue of extremism and terrorism, Pakistan has always demonstrated its sincerity to address the challenge. Undoubtedly, the beneficiaries of an unstable Afghanistan are those forces, which desire to expand their strategic ditches to legitimize their presence and relevance in the regional environment and continue to encircle China and wage proxy wars against Pakistan. Pakistan remains committed to peace process in Afghanistan.
