But Biden can only go so far as to claim that the deal has pressed him. It included a notwithstanding clause: the US could have withdrawn from the deal if Afghan peace talks had failed. They did, but Biden chose to stick to it, even though he delayed the full withdrawal from May to September. John Bolton and H.R. McMaster, two former Trump national security advisers known for their hawkish views, have criticized Trump and Biden for stepping down — though both have long criticized the deal with the Taliban. Lisa Curtis, a former senior National Security Council official who sat next to Afghan envoy Zalmay Khalilzad during negotiations with the Taliban, told AP: “The Doha agreement was a very weak agreement, and the United States. should have received more concessions from the Taliban. Although the Taliban derive their main wish from this agreement – the withdrawal of US troops – they have remained vague in their commitments to protect civil rights, which they brutally repressed when they were in power. Much of the peace negotiations took place during a year of record power on both sides. In the last quarter of 2019 alone, the Taliban carried out 8,204 attacks, the highest figure for that period in the last ten years. The U.S. dropped 7,423 bombs and missiles during the year, a record since the Air Force began recording data in 2006.
But the deal leaves an unpleasant reality for the Trump administration: it signed an agreement with a movement in which an officially listed terrorist group, the Haqqani Network, known for its suicide bombing campaign, is an integral part of the leadership. The head of the network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the deputy head and military commander of the Taliban. The United States and the Taliban signed a peace agreement, a turning point in the 18-year war in Afghanistan. Read the full story. The deal also depends on more difficult negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government over the country`s future. Officials hope that these talks will lead to a power-sharing agreement and a permanent ceasefire, but both ideas have been anathema to the Taliban in the past. Khalilzad, the veteran diplomat who leads U.S. peace efforts and is himself from Afghanistan, has long insisted that the U.S. is not seeking a withdrawal agreement, but “a peace agreement that allows withdrawal.” “The Islamic Emirate considers this to be a clear violation of the Doha Agreement, which is not in the interest of either the United States or Afghanistan,” the statement reads, referring to the agreement signed in the Qatari capital.
The historic agreement has always been high-level diplomacy that required some degree of trust in the Taliban as a potential peacemaker and was signed despite skepticism from war-weary Afghans who feared losing their authority in a power-sharing agreement. The deal he brokered, which then-President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fully supported, committed the United States to withdraw all its troops in exchange for a promise from the Taliban to begin peace talks with the Afghan government and ensure that Afghanistan would not be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks. Peace talks came to nothing, Trump began withdrawing troops prematurely, and according to the United Nations, the Taliban maintained close ties with al-Qaeda. But President Joe Biden, who had promised to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan as a candidate, decided to push the deal forward and announced a troop withdrawal in April. Former acting defense secretary Christopher Miller told Defense One this week that Trump`s deal was actually a “game” to obscure his administration`s true intentions, which were to mediate a Taliban-led government that would allow a small number of U.S. troops to stay in the country to conduct counterterrorism missions. U.S. officials made it clear at the time that the agreement was based on conditions and that the failure of intra-Afghan peace talks to reach a negotiated solution would have lifted the obligation to withdraw.
But after the U.S. promised the Taliban to withdraw their troops within a set time frame, with the Taliban pledging to strike a peace deal with the Afghan government, the chances of a negotiated end to the war began to crumble, experts said. The Taliban wanted a guaranteed timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. Washington wanted a ceasefire and a peace process. Khalilzad has been under pressure to act quickly as Trump has made no secret of his desire to unilaterally withdraw his troops, with or without a peace deal. Some experts and former diplomats say the time to push for peace is years ago, when the US had maximum influence, just after US-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001. Or when the U.S. had 100,000 troops on the ground when President Barack Obama`s troop increase more than 10 years ago. As Khalilzad described, the agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban was intended to initiate both a gradual withdrawal of U.S.
troops and simultaneous peace negotiations between the insurgents and the Afghan government. Withdrawal, Khalilzad often said, would be “conditional.” A senior administration official said the deal between the U.S. and the Taliban was “problematic” and severely limited the Biden administration`s options. ==References=====External links===On the way to this concession to the Taliban, there was nothing more than a narrow window of opportunity to launch a genuine peace process,” said Miller of the ICG. “The window was already closing when Biden took office, and then the decision to step down quickly sucked up all the oxygen of the peace efforts.” “I truly believe the Taliban want to do something to show that we are not wasting all our time,” President Trump said in Washington hours after the deal was signed. “When bad things happen, we go back.” The big picture: The Trump administration has agreed to settle by 1. Withdraw from the country in May 2021 if the Taliban negotiate a peace deal with the Afghan government and promise to prevent terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State from gaining a foothold. The United States and the Taliban signed the peace agreement on February 29 in Doha, Qatar. “The deal will mean nothing — and today`s good feelings won`t last — unless we take concrete action against the commitments made and the promises made,” Pompeo said.
Previous governments had tried in vain for years to start peace talks with the Taliban, as the insurgents denied the Afghan government a seat at the table. But Trump`s White House abandoned that condition, and Khalilzad had a free hand to talk to the Taliban without the presence of Afghan government officials. The agreement sets out commitments the Taliban should make to prevent terrorism, including commitments to abandon al-Qaeda and prevent that group or other Afghan soil from being used to plan attacks against the United States or its allies. While the agreement required the Taliban to stop attacks on U.S. and coalition forces, it did not explicitly require them to expel al-Qaeda or stop attacks on the Afghan army. “The protests were important news this week. A few days ago, there were large peaceful demonstrations, but as protesters approached the presidential palace, people were arrested, including journalists,” Bellis said. .