Introduction
Afghan news breaks with a rather usual headline of another group of Afghan Security Forces getting killed in a Taliban attack almost every day. The Trump-led United States faltered on its promise of peace and prosperity to the Afghan people. Critics of Donald Trump even believe that the United States did not falter as it never promised it in the first place. The US-Taliban Peace Deal, which was supposed to hold peace in Afghanistan and pave the way for its development seems to be a mere mirage with empty promises backed by vague wording and negligible accountability measures for the Taliban to maintain peace in the region.
The US-Taliban peace deal was successful in achieving Trump’s objective of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan just before the US Presidential elections in November this year. This move completely disregarded the condition of the Afghan people and stole their possibility of an equitable peace solution. With news disseminating from both Government and Taliban sides in Afghanistan, attempting to achieve peace in the region the ground reality seems to be completely different and even these “discussions” are resulting in a large demographic of people losing lives and livelihoods every day in Afghanistan.
Basics of the US-Taliban Peace Deal
The four-part agreement between the United States and the Taliban committed the United States to withdraw most of its soldiers from Afghanistan. In exchange, the Taliban provided assurances that Afghanistan would no longer be used as a base from which to wage attacks against the U.S. and its allies and also agreed to engage with the Afghan government. Other conditions included releasing 1,000 Afghan prisoners and the remaining six conditions in the U.S.-Taliban deal essentially demand, in various ways, that the Taliban sever all ties with militant organizations, especially al-Qaida.
So far, the international and domestic observers of this deal have not witnessed any progress on the Taliban severing their ties with the Al-Qaeda. In fact, the May 2020 report submitted to the United Nations Sanctions Committee said that the Taliban met with al-Qaida repeatedly in 2019 and early 2020 to coordinate “operational planning, training and the provision by the Taliban of safe havens for al-Qaida members inside Afghanistan.”
Failure of the US-Taliban Peace Deal
As the Taliban has not ensured a reduction in violence but has rather resulted in an increasing number of casualties and incidents with each passing day on the Afghan Security Forces such as the public protection force, three of who’s officers were killed in a deadly Taliban attack yesterday. The inability or reluctance in severing ties with Al-Qaeda showcases a lack of control over military elements in the Afghan Civil War unlike what they claimed before or the Taliban’s dealing in bad faith with the United States.
In either of the cases, innocent civilians are losing their lives and livelihoods with each passing day around the country. This wouldn’t have been the case if the US-Taliban Peace Deal was efficiently drafted and negotiated with a holistic approach rather than the pinhole objective of winning Presidential elections. Unlike any decent peace agreement, this deal lacks the enforcement mechanisms which was pertinent to the success of peace agreements. Due to the lack of enforcement mechanisms, the United States and the Afghan Government cannot do anything beyond stopping the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. The outright flaw of this deal is very clear when viewed this in the context of an infinity player versus limited player in the game theory, and sadly due to the running out of options, United States is the limited player in this situation thus making the deal ineffective and a failure in the long run.
Conclusion
With President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan announcing Abdullah Abdullah as the leader of the High Council for National Reconciliation some fronts in this Afghan conflict look promising for establishing and maintaining peace in the region. Their powersharing opens doors for the internal government functioning but with Taliban withholding even more Afghans and not releasing them according to the US-Taliban Peace Deal and the United States being left with a lack of options to deal with the Taliban showcases the ineffectiveness of the deal and deceptive techniques employed by the Trump administration to swing votes in their favor using a mirage of peace in Afghanistan through United States’ deal.
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