Despite the Qatar-sponsored US-Taliban peace deal, and the breaking out of the Covid-19 pandemic in Afghanistan like most other places of the world, the violence in Afghanistan just simply fails to cease.
There were talks of reduced violence between Taliban and Afghan government forces, although the peace deal only says about stoppage of hostility between the Taliban and the US forces. In fact, Taliban attacks on the Afghan government forces have actually increased in comparison to similar times in other preceding years.
Even the coronavirus wasn’t able to reign in the Taliban, although the Covid-19 situation in that country is actually quite grim; for example, it is suspected that more than a quarter of people of Kabul might have contracted coronavirus. The other major population centres may not be much better than this either.
The health care facilities of war-ravaged Afghanistan are dismal. The worst part is, terror outfits like the Islamic State branch of Afghanistan are carrying out terror attacks even in these pandemic conditions, and that too on hospitals. The latest ones were a maternity hospital attack killing several newborns; the other major one was at a funeral.
The US and Taliban peace deal has followed a long series of dialogues, with ups and downs, between the belligerents spanning more than two years. The current Afghan War, directly involving the US and its allies, has been going on for almost two decades now with no clear winner.
The Americans thought they would do what the Soviets couldn’t ie eliminate the Taliban who are somewhat similar to erstwhile Mujahedeen, establish a dispensation of their own choice, and ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan as they envision. It didn’t work that way. The Taliban survived.
The Taliban on the other hand, although survived, couldn’t achieve any decisive victory as the Mujahedeen did against the Soviet-supported Afghan regime, despite the fact that the US and its allies withdrew a bulk of its forces already from the peak of their deployment.
The Afghan government controls most of the major cities and population centres, whereas the Taliban is controlling a substantial part of rural Afghanistan. Frustrations are on both sides. Hence, the prospect of some kind of peace.
Another reason for the losing of interest by the US in Afghanistan is that there is not a post-9/11-like emotion in the US anymore against terror-harbouring countries. Many of those countries have almost been razed to the ground already in the subsequent developments.
Rather, a long stay in a relatively barren country like Afghanistan and high expenses from the US exchequer has forced it to rethink. Afghanistan bore some nuisance value, which the US now thinks it has sufficiently addressed and there is hardly any profit value in Afghanistan.
However, a global superpower like the US needs a graceful exit and it comes down to how much of that the Taliban is willing to concede. The US and allies have already invested hugely to build the current Afghan state, its military, police, civil administration, infrastructures, and employed a lot of its energy to cobble together some kind of lasting alliance involving the anti-Taliban fractions of Afghan ethnicities like Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek , Hazara etc.
On the other hand, the Taliban is predominantly Pashtun. The US won’t just abandon the outcome of its long endeavour to the mercy of the Taliban. That brings in the intra- Afghan dialogue part in the recently- signed US-Taliban agreement. The main Taliban takeaway from the current agreement is a short 14 month timeline for full US withdrawal from the country.
Nevertheless, the US pulling out and staying away from Afghanistan in the long-term will depend on the Taliban keeping its end of the promise of not harbouring terror outfits like al-Qaeda now and in the future, a ceasing of hostilities from its side, and vice versa, and the start of the intra-Afghan talks on the final agreement on the future of the country.
In one sense, this agreement is part one of a prospective and forthcoming comprehensive agreement -- if everything goes well from now on. President Donald Trump has been quite interested to strike out some deal with Taliban and extricate America from this protracted unpopular engagement, especially in the year of his re-election bid.
He also has something to show now to his electorate; though many experts posit that the Taliban have got the better bargain. Despite the US and Taliban being able to cross the first barrier, another big hurdle to be negotiated would be the differences between the Taliban and Afghan government and the subsequent coming together of them to some agreement for a final settlement by solving their key contentions.
Presumably, the constitution, some kind of democracy, interim government, status of Taliban fighters, and another election would be on the agenda. This time, the US will probably become the facilitator or broker. Nevertheless, it’s not easy to strike a lasting deal in a country with a history full of infighting and wars.
In the geo-strategic setting of the region and trans region, the US, Central Asian countries, and India support the Afghan government while Pakistan tacitly supports Taliban. Iran and China also have interests in Afghanistan.
The challenge for the international stakeholders would be to find ways to work with both the Afghan government and moderated Taliban to make the endeavour work. Terror and instability in conservative Afghanistan affect its neighbours with borders and beyond.
There was supposed to be a big prisoner swap between Afghanistan and the Taliban. Due to recent Taliban attacks, the Ashraf Ghani government has reduced the scale of it significantly. Instead of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, they released just 100. On the other hand, Taliban released 20 captured soldiers rather than 1,000 which had been talked about.
Covid-19 priorities have supposedly delayed the intra-Afghan talks, which are supposed to usher in a ceasefire between Taliban and the Afghan government. It’s hard, at this point of time, to predict the ultimate fate of Afghanistan. All the parties have learned some lessons in a long exhaustive way in the stretched-out battle fields of that country.
The only hopeful thing to watch for would be whether that long war fatigue heralds something good for the suffering humanity of Afghanistan, whose fate hitherto has been in the hands of war lords, Islamic guerrillas , quarrelling governing alliances, and international players.
Sarwar Jahan Chowdhury is an opinion contributor to the Dhaka Tribune.
