WASHINGTON: The Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban has passed its first major deadline, but hopes for peace in Afghanistan remain as dim as ever.
The US-Taliban deal this past week hit the 135-day mark, the point by which the US military needed to draw down to 8,600 troops and withdraw from five bases. Both objectives were met, the Pentagon said.
At the same time, the firestorm over whether Russia offered bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops, and a brazen Taliban attack on an intelligence complex in northern Afghanistan, dropped already low expectations for ending America’s longest war even lower.
A day after the 135-day market was met, the top US general in the region painted a grim picture of prospects for further progress.
“We expected to see a reduction in violence,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, told Voice of America this past week. “And while the Taliban have been scrupulous about not attacking the US or coalition forces, in fact, the violence against the Afghans is higher than it’s been in quite a while. It’s one of the highest, most violent periods of the war that we’ve seen today.”
The agreement between the US and the Taliban was meant to precede talks between the Taliban and Afghan government, seen as essential for true peace in Afghanistan. The document specified a March 10 start date for talks.
But months later, those talks have yet to begin amid a halting prisoner exchange and stepped-up Taliban attacks on Afghan forces.
In Monday’s high-profile attack, the Taliban detonated a car bomb outside an Afghan intelligence complex in the city of Aybak and then battled Afghan forces inside the compound for hours, killing 11 and wounding more than 60 others.
“The current level of violence – driven especially by Taliban attacks against Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, remains unacceptably high, causing instability and undermining confidence in the peace process,” NATO’s North Atlantic Council said in a statement this past week.
US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the deal with the Taliban, condemned Monday’s attack even as he hailed the “key milestone” of the deal reaching 135 days.
“There has been major progress, albeit slow, on prisoner releases,” he tweeted. “The Taliban & the Islamic Republic negotiating teams have made progress on logistics for intra-Afghan talks. No American has lost his/her life in Afghanistan to Taliban violence. Regional relations have improved.”
“But more progress is needed on counter-terrorism,” he added. “And violence has been high, especially in recent days & weeks. Afghans continue to die in large numbers for no reason.”
The US-Taliban deal also called for a full US withdrawal from Afghanistan within 14 months if the Taliban fulfills its commitments to prevent terrorists from using the country to launch attacks against the West.
But in addition to heightened levels of violence, McKenzie also cast doubt on the Taliban fulfilling the counterterrorism commitments.
“The biggest conditions, of course, are that we need to be assured that ISIS and al Qaeda do not have the opportunity to be hosted in Afghanistan and develop attacks against the West,” he told Voice of America. “Right now, it is simply unclear to me that the Taliban has taken any positive steps in those areas. They still may get to it, and time is not out. But I just haven’t seen that actually develop yet. So I think we’re coming up on a pretty important time in this process.”
President Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on a promise to end America’s so-called endless wars, has indicated he wants US troops out of Afghanistan by the 2020 election in November regardless of the status of the Taliban deal.
But he’s facing additional pressure not to withdraw following revelations that US intelligence indicated a Russian military intelligence unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill US and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Critics argue it’s another piece of evidence the Taliban can’t be trusted.
