I’m cautiously optimistic that the US may withdraw from Afghanistan before too long. The policy hasn’t ever worked. The horrible side effect, of course, is that the suffering and repression of women in the country will surely reassert itself under Taliban rule and I don’t even want to think about how awful it’s going to be.
Regardless, it’s an untenable situation. The problem is that Trump is president and he’s almost surely going to make everything much worse than it would otherwise be.
President Donald Trump’s phone call with Taliban leaders last week was profound and unprecedented in the long timeline that makes up America’s longest war.
For some in American national security and diplomatic circles, it was a climax in a frustrating, years-long peace process. For others, it was also a worrisome event—not because of what Trump said but because of who, exactly, he spoke with. Some of the Taliban leaders on the other end of the line were also on secret U.S. kill-or-capture lists. The commander in chief was chatting with people his government officially still wanted jailed or dead, two Defense Department sources told The Daily Beast.
Of course, any peace initiative is going to require talking with one’s enemies—and this call was no exception. But some U.S. defense officials insisted that this was a step too far, and a sign of what they see as a slapdash approach to ending America’s involvement in the Afghan conflict.
It’s the latest indication that Trump, who has long wanted out of Afghanistan, is far apart from the Pentagon on how to wind down the U.S. military’s longest foreign war. Military anxieties are understandable. The U.S. is, for the first time, taking a gamble on negotiating an endgame with an enemy it doesn’t trust and which has all the leverage in the negotiations. A pre-deal ceasefire already broke down on Wednesday, five days after the deal was unveiled, when the U.S. bombed a Taliban position in Helmand to disrupt an attack by the militant group on a checkpoint run by Afghan security forces.
NBC News reported late last week that there is “persuasive intelligence” that the Taliban has no intention of abiding by the deal.
The Taliban has all the leverage and they are dealing with an imbecile who can be flattered into giving away the store. What could go wrong?