Afghan peace
deal in doldrums
The US
president, true to form, exploded a bombshell by revealing that the Afghan
Taliban and the Afghan government representatives led by President Ashraf Ghani
were to be flown to his official retreat Camp David for sealing the peace deal
but because of the Taliban attack in Kabul in which a US soldier was killed, he
had decided to call off this meeting. Even before the ink was dry on the draft peace
agreement Special US Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has hammered out in nine rounds of
talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, the portents were troubling. Khalilzad
had travelled to Kabul in recent days for discussions with Afghan President
Ashraf Ghani on the deal, during which he is reported to have shown Ghani the
draft agreement but refused to leave it with him. There were not just reports
of disagreements between Khalilzad and Ghani, but according to some sources, a
‘shouting match’ between the two. Perhaps as a result, Ghani’s visit to the US
for discussions with President Donald Trump has been postponed by Washington.
Khalilzad in the meantime had rushed back to Doha, reportedly to discuss the
recent uptick in attacks by the Taliban, particularly in the western provinces
of Afghanistan but also in the form of back-to-back bombings in Kabul that
triggered the cancellation of the top secret huddle in Camp David. Although the
Taliban attacks in Farah, Kunduz and Pul-e-Khumri have been or are in the
process of being beaten back with claims of heavy losses to the Taliban, the
role of US forces, especially from the air, still presents itself as crucial
for the fight against the insurgents. That irreducible fact has set alarm bells
ringing, with objections to the deal from the Afghan government, several former
US ambassadors to Afghanistan, and former defence secretary Jim Mattis’ book arguing
against a hasty withdrawal of US troops, citing the example of Iraq amongst
others. There are also questions being raised about the intent of the Taliban
in the light of their stepped up attacks even as the Doha agreement is supposed
to be close to closure. The critics are not confined to former US officials or
the Afghan government. President Ashraf Ghani’s Tajik allies in the form of
slain Lion of Panjsher Ahmad Shah Massoud’s son have expressed grave
apprehensions regarding the outcome of the deal. While Zalmay Khalilzad was
claiming the other day that it was all but done, reports spoke of President Trump’s
reluctance to put his imprimatur on the draft. As though that message needed to
be underlined, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was said to have refused to
sign it.
The problem at
the heart of the draft agreement is that Taliban guarantees against Afghan soil
ever again being used for attacks on the US or its allies are being questioned
given their clear ‘fighting while talking strategy’, which some reports
describe as a way to strengthen their negotiating position but which has given
rise to concerns about the intent of the Taliban to wrest power through the
barrel of a gun, tactical negotiations with the US and concessions to a less
stringent form of Taliban rule notwithstanding. From the Taliban’s perspective,
the game has already been given away by Trump’s scarcely concealed and oft
repeated desire to withdraw US troops before his bid for re-election in 2020. With
that in mind, the Taliban know Washington has tacitly already admitted defeat
and is merely gravitating towards a ‘cut-and-run’ policy. With Washington’s
hand so completely exposed, the Taliban could be forgiven for thinking that all
they have to do is wait out the US’s cut-off date and in the meantime increase
pressure on the battlefield. Given these recent developments, persuading the
Taliban from the weak hand Washington appears to hold to enter into talks with
the Afghan government for a cessation of war and a subsequent (hoped for) power
sharing arrangement increasingly looks like pie-in-the-sky. The Taliban
continue to dismiss the Afghan government out of hand as a US ‘puppet’ and have
only conceded meeting Afghan officials in their personal capacity (which may
still happen in the conference planned in Norway). But for anyone without the
blinkers of narrow self-interest, it seems plain as daylight that the Taliban
intend to go for broke, especially now that the fissures emerging in the US administration
itself regarding the deal are out in the open.
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