Cracks already showing in US-Taliban peace deal

The truce was intended to set the conditions for intra-Afghan talks scheduled for 10 March. Now that the process of coalition withdrawal has been kick-started regardless, it seems the administration of President Ashraf Ghani has been left with relatively little to bargain with.

After nearly 20 years of bloodshed, the Doha withdrawal agreement could see the last of coalition forces returning home from the ‘forever war’ as soon as spring 2021.

Pundits far and wide were quick to extol the virtues of a speedy departure, with many ascribing success to President Donald Trump’s decidedly unconventional approach to foreign policy. As he noted so tellingly in last year’s State of the Union address, "Great nations do not fight endless wars."

NPR, Al-Jazeera and a host of other outlets were quick to see through the confetti. Instead of actively involving the government the US is supposedly there to bolster, Kabul has been left out of a deal which addresses a prisoner exchange dialogue scheduled between Kabul and the Taliban for 10 March.

Speaking at the Afghan capital on Sunday, President Ghani told reporters that this is not a promise the US is capable of making.

Congressman Tom Malinowski similarly gave this pledge short shrift on Twitter: “Two weeks ago in Munich, [Mike Pompeo] made a commitment to me and other members of Congress: the Afghan peace deal would NOT require the Afghan [government] to release Taliban prisoners,” he wrote. “Today’s deal requires them to release 5,000.”

In the context of the 10 March talks, the government wasted little time in pushing back on these assertions. Though suggesting the request could form part of the negotiations (scheduled to take place in the Norwegian capital), the Afghan president emphasised that it could not operate as a precondition to those talks.

The options, as the Taliban sees it, are now twofold. They could fold their cards in part, settling for bona fide participation in a coalition government.

Or – now that the US has signalled its’ fixation on a curt exit – they can say and do whatever it takes to get this withdrawal to happen, before turning on the central government once the last troop carriers have left the tarmac.

Has the US shown its hand too early?

Though the breaking of the truce is troubling, when viewed in the full context of a clearly-evinced US intention to draw down on troop numbers in the run-up to this year's presidential election, it seems to have longer-term implications; leaving Afghan counterparts holding relatively little in the way of bargaining chips.

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At a White House press conference following the signing of the deal, reporters quizzed President Trump about when soldiers can be expected to start leaving the country. "Today," he replied. "They will start immediately."

Building on these comments, Defense Secretary Mark Esper indicated to an audience at the Pentagon that US command in Afghanistan had been given the go-ahead to begin pulling troops from the region.

This, of course, took place on Monday – less than 48 hours after the deal was struck. It seems the US administration is looking to double down on its word; as many have drawn the link between the proposed withdrawal schedule and the American electoral cycle, this could even make President Trump the first of three successive presidents to fulfil this electoral pledge.

However, Afghanistan is still very much a country fractured along ethnic, sectarian and linguistic battlelines. Taliban strongholds remain peppered across the country; any effort to jointly administer Helmand Province, for one, would soon give way to strong Pakistani influences from the bordering FATA regions.

Though the support among the Australian public for a withdrawal from Afghanistan is strong, doing so in such a high-profile, unilateral manner before the 10 March talks undermines the sovereignty of the Ghani administration – and more importantly, negates any sort of bargaining power the central government would have had over the prisoner swap component.

A brazen approach from the insurgency

While many Western commentators unfamiliar with Afghani geopolitics are comparing this to a ‘snag’ in proceedings, a deal now contingent on prisoner release only poses headaches for one side. Reports have already surfaced of Taliban social media accounts linking the 10 March talks to ‘taqqiyah’; the purposive interpretation of Quranic text that sanctions the act of deliberate deception.

Should this doctrine play a central role in the Taliban’s approach to the 10 March talks (or beyond), we could well see violence erupt with renewed vigour after the departure of coalition forces.

This time, of course, potentially with an extra 5,000 Taliban combatants spread around the country, depending on how the talks unfold. Like so many of his countrymen, Shaharzad Akbar, chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, voiced his concerns over the weekend.

“The general secrecy around the deal, the lack of presence of non-Taliban Afghans in the process, the fact that the US-Taliban talks seemed to marginalise other Afghan voices, all have made me anxious ... if the agreement allows for a reasonable timeline for a responsible withdrawal and ensures intra-Afghan talks, there is room for hope about a substantive reduction in conflict and violence. Peace will require much more.”

Your thoughts

Progress in Afghanistan has been paid for in blood. A premature withdrawal risks undoing all of the advances made towards a better, brighter future for the central Asian nation. The country’s democratic institutions remain fragile, the economy is addicted to foreign aid, and Taliban ideology holds sway over considerable pockets of the population.

From a Western standpoint, Akbar’s message is clear. An appropriate coalition exit is one managed in a timely, nuanced manner; one which prioritises intra-Afghan consensus on what, where and when to withdraw so as to avoid creating dangerous power vacuums.

An exit that is acutely aware of Taliban intention, capabilities and political motives. In other words, not this one.

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