On Saturday, the United States and Afghanistan's Taliban rebels announced the signing of a new peace agreement that would see U.S. troops withdraw from the country in 14 months if Taliban officials implement a cease-fire, fully cut themselves off from terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS, and enter power-sharing agreements with the Afghanistan government. Notably, the Afghanistan government itself was not involved in those negotiations.
There has been considerable skepticism, however, over whether the new "deal" would hold up any better than any of the previous attempts at a negotiated end to the conflict between the nation's U.S.-supported government and the still-powerful Taliban. Two days after the signing, renewed violence is not giving much reason for optimism.
AFP reported this morning that the Taliban had ordered its fighters to resume military operations against the Afghanistan government, ending the weeklong semi-cease-fire leading up to the U.S.-Taliban agreement. The Taliban says it will not attack foreign troops, in accordance with the signed agreement, but only Afghanistan government forces, while the United States says it will defend those Afghanistan forces if they’re attacked. It is also demanding that 5,000 Taliban prisoners be released before it will enter into the government-Taliban negotiations called for in the U.S. agreement.
While the U.S.-Taliban deal specifies that the prisoner release will happen before the March 10 beginning of talks, however, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani is rejecting that Taliban demand outright. The BBC reports that Ghani said the prisoner release "cannot be a prerequisite" for any upcoming talks, but "could be included in the agenda," noting that it was "not in the authority of the US" to make the trade.
So far, then, this appears to be starting from the same place as every other would-be negotiated withdrawal of U.S. troops after nearly 20 years of Afghanistan occupation. The Taliban has little apparent motivation to enforce a cease-fire; the Afghanistan government is bristling at continued promises the United States is making to its enemies on its supposed behalf; the United States government is heralding would-be breakthroughs that may or may not still exist a week later.
It has been evident that Donald Trump wants to claim credit for an Afghanistan withdrawal and that his Cabinet has been tasked with extracting sufficient concessions from Taliban forces to make that withdrawal appear victorious—or, at least, to save face. At a cost now estimated to be over $1 trillion and still growing, over 3,500 coalition casualties, and nearly two decades of unending violence, the neoconservative-backed Afghanistan occupation has been at best a gargantuan blunder for America. Achieving any exit that does not result in U.S. responsibility for the catastrophic wave of violence and oppression likely to follow has proven so far to be impossible.
Trump's own erraticism, however, has greatly complicated his ambitions to succeed where his predecessors did not. Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw U.S. forces around the world unilaterally, from South Korea to Afghanistan, and in fact did so in Kurdish-held Syria, reversing without explanation the longstanding alliance between the U.S. and local Kurdish forces and allowing the Turkish military to swiftly move in to purge those Kurdish fighters and occupy Kurdish towns.
It has to be evident to Taliban commanders that there is a very good chance that Trump, angry at his own military leaders, will at some point order an Afghanistan withdrawal with or without concessions. There's therefore less reason than ever to promise such things, or if promised, to adhere to them. In the end, Trump's worldwide lack of credibility and known penchant for policy tantrums gives the United States little clout here.