Kabul Kabul; Is the Taliban Deal a Turkey? -UPDATED

Like our failed war in Iraq, where, by deposing a Sunnis dictator under a fabricated WMD premise, we effectively handed mostly Shiite Iraq to almost all-Shiite Iran, our continuing war in Afghanistan installed a mega-corrupt and failing government that never consistently controlled more than the region around Kabul. The folks who harbored the 9/11/01 terrorists – who destroyed the Twin Towers, crashed into the Pentagon and got taken down in a Pennsylvania field – who were running Afghanistan then – the ultra-right wing Sunni fundamentalist Taliban – have just been fully legitimized by the Trump-led US government. And will be running Afghanistan again.

We have literally forced our surrogates in Kabul to enter into a new power-sharing arrangement with these Taliban Islamists. Had the United States simply withdrawn its forces without such an accord, the Taliban would probably have taken the Afghan capital immediately by military conquest. Many predict, that’s what will happen anyway.

The signature deal was signed on February 29^th at a fancy hotel in Doha, Qatar by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar for the Taliban and US representative Zalmay Khalizad (see above). Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo sat on the sideline. Many US conservatives, a sprinkling of liberals as well, and more than a few of our military leaders who served there, were simply aghast. Even as the Taliban vaguely pledged to fight terrorism in the future, the rest of the accord seems like a win-win for them with little tangible in the way of concessions for the United States. A lot of captured Taliban fighters will be released, a thought that makes many former combatants cringe.

Writing for the March 1^st Los Angeles Times, David Cloud, Tracy Wilkinson and Stefanie Glinski explain: “The accord requires Taliban militants to prevent Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from using Afghan territory to threaten the U.S. But it does not require the militant group to renounce its ties to terrorist groups, an omission that critics said is one of several examples in which the deal appears one-sided.

“‘Signing this agreement with Taliban is an unacceptable risk to America’s civilian populations,’ John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, said Saturday in an unusually harsh tweet hours after the agreement was signed in Doha. ‘This is an Obama-style deal [that] sends the wrong signal.’ [But it seemed vastly more Trumpian to the world.]

“The accord was signed by U.S. and Taliban negotiators side by side in a luxury hotel ballroom in a scene once all but unthinkable. The two sides agreed that the U.S. would cut its troop levels from around 12,000 today to 8,600 by early summer — and withdraw completely from Afghanistan within 14 months if Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not reemerge there.

“But as current and former officials examined the fine print, they discovered the deal requires the withdrawal not only of U.S. troops, but also some 8,000 military personnel from other countries, who play a key role in training Afghan soldiers and police, plus tens of thousands of contractors and “nondiplomatic” personnel, a designation that would seem to include CIA officers who perform a vital counter-terrorism function in Afghanistan.

“‘The withdrawals provisions seem far more comprehensive than advertised,’ said Brett McGurk, a former Obama and Trump administration envoy. ‘It’s a total withdrawal ... that would likely produce a gradual collapse of the state, civil war and the Taliban back in Kabul.’

“Trump administration officials said the agreement offers perhaps the best opportunity yet for the U.S. to extricate itself from a grinding 19-year war that has cost the lives of more than 2,400 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Afghans since it invaded after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and ousted the Taliban from power.

“The onus will be on the Taliban, American officials said, to keep terrorist groups out of Afghanistan and to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with the U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul. Otherwise, they warned, the U.S. could halt its troop withdrawals and resume combat operations against the Taliban.

“‘The agreement we sign today will be the true test,’ Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said as he opened the ceremony. ‘We will closely watch the Taliban’s compliance with their commitments and calibrate the pace of our withdrawals to their actions.’

“Even a partial pullout would give Trump an election-year achievement, enabling him to claim he has followed through on his pledge to scale back overseas wars, a goal that has largely eluded him in Iraq and Syria…

“Taliban officials certainly treated the deal as a victory… Dozens of Taliban — some with smartphones, others fingering worry beads — took seats in the red-carpeted hall for the signing, many of them sitting in proximity to current and former U.S. officials, their longtime foes, for the first time. ‘God is great,’ they shouted in unison as the ceremony concluded.

“Viewing themselves as having succeeded in forcing the U.S. to agree to withdraw, Taliban leaders perceive themselves to be in a position of strength, Paul Miller, a former U.S. National Security Council official who oversaw Afghanistan policy, said in remarks last week at the Center for National Security, a centrist Washington think tank.” The Trump appointees who negotiated the accord were clearly outclassed and outnegotiated by their Taliban counterparts. Clearly, Afghan President Asraf Ghani and his officials are not happy. They will bear the brunt of this rather bizarre agreement… and possible ultimate loss of power. Death? Was the Afghan President biting his tongue as he spoke? “‘Our sacrifice has been immense,’ Ghani said while addressing the nation. ‘U.S. and NATO partners have spared neither blood nor treasure. Today can be the moment of overcoming the past, of sustained, dignified peace. We have the political will to bring this peace.’

“The timing of the next round of talks could hardly be worse for Ghani, who this month was declared the winner of presidential elections — nearly five contentious months after the vote. His chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has refused to recognize that outcome and declared himself the victor… Without continuing U.S. pressure on the Taliban, its leaders could quickly back away from the agreement, or the Afghan government could become mired in internal divisions, analysts said.” LA Times.

And typically, once Trump pulls out of a region, it is pretty much on its own to survive. Ask the Kurds who fought along side US forces how they felt when Trump pulled US forces of Syria, giving a wink and a nod for Turkish forced to attack them. Out of curiosity, Donald, how is the atmosphere in Afghanistan after this accord?

“The US military has conducted an air strike against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, just hours after President Donald Trump said he had had a ‘very good talk’ with a leader of the group… [A] US forces spokesman said it launched an air strike on Wednesday in response to Taliban fighters attacking Afghan forces in Helmand province.” BBC.com, March 4^th. Another well-constructed diplomatic success story for the President. When is our election again?

              I’m Peter Dekom, and it hard to measure the degree of international destabilization caused by overly simplistic Trump-mandated actions, built to cater to specific US voting blocs, but devoid of any truly long-standing pragmatic solutions.