By Ibraheem Thurial Bahiss

On 29 February 2020 the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement to bring an end to what has been dubbed the United States' Longest War. The United States has been militarily involved in Afghanistan for nearly 19 years. For Afghans bearing the brunt of the conflict however, this war has been raging on for nearly 41 years and has seen the involvement of the twentieth century's two only superpowers.

When Zalmay Khalilzad was appointed as Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation he was tasked with "developing the opportunities to get the Afghans and the Taliban to come to a reconciliation". Soon after his appointment, Khalilzad developed a four-item agenda that included the full withdrawal of foreign forces, Taliban guarantees against terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, a comprehensive ceasefire, and facilitating intra-Afghan talks to end the devastating conflict.

The US Envoy insisted that the four items were fundamentally interconnected and an agreement on any one issue would not be finalized until all four issues were resolved. In his own words "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed"

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Yet the Agreement signed in Doha last week fundamentally deviates from this mantra. The chapeau of the Agreement states that all four parts are interconnected but then qualifies that by stating that each will be implemented independently. Also clarifies that the signed Agreement only deals with the first two parts (troops' withdrawal and combatting foreign terrorist groups) which 'paves the way for the last two parts.' In other words, only the first two parts are agreed to and the last two parts – at the insistence of the Taliban – are left for the Afghans to resolve themselves. Needlessly to say, this deviates from the original blueprint of the Special Representative and his mission statement as alluded to above.

What was agreed on?

The Agreement calls on the Taliban not to allow any groups or individuals to use 'the soil of Afghanistan' to threaten the United States or its allies. This includes preventing such groups and individuals from recruiting, training, fundraising or being hosted in Afghanistan. The Agreement alludes to 'guarantees and enforcement mechanisms' to ensure these obligations are fulfilled, without specifying what such mechanism might look like. In return, the United States has announced a timetable for withdrawing 'all non-diplomatic military and civilian personnel' from Afghanistan.

The withdrawal of United States and allied forces will be conducted in two stages. The United States will reduce its force size to 8,600 within 4.5 months while the remaining troops will be withdrawn within 9.5 months after that date provided that the Taliban fulfil their obligations and commitments in preventing groups and individuals from using the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States.

The Agreement does not mention the metrics with which Taliban compliance will be measured, yet perhaps, this has been left deliberately nebulous to allow US maximum flexibility in determining when those conditions are met. National Security Advisor – Hamdullah Mohib – sought to capitalise on this obscurity and argued that the withdrawal of foreign troops was contingent on the progress of intra-Afghan talks.  The implied premise being that without progress in intra-Afghan talks, no single party would be able to meet their counter-terrorism obligations and therefore, the United States could not argue that the Taliban had fulfilled those obligations.

However, this view is not supported by the text of the Agreement. The Agreement unequivocally provides that the United States will withdraw 'all remaining forces' when the Taliban fulfil their commitments relating to severing ties with terrorist groups as laid out in Part Two of the Agreement.

The fact that the US prevaricated the metrics of this obligation, does not necessarily mean that there are no monitoring or enforcement mechanism in place for verifying compliance. With an agreement so fundamentally tied to United States security interests, one can assume that it contains robust monitoring and compliance mechanisms. The 'secret annexes' to which Secretary Pompeo referred might be the key to understanding what the monitoring mechanisms could look like. The annexes, referred to as 'military implementation documents' that would 'protect our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines,' by Pompeo, might appear innocuous, but we may deduce that this likely entails some form of cooperation between the Taliban and United States to ensure that the former is meeting their obligations and commitments under the Agreement.

Intra-Afghan talks and ceasefire

The Agreement between the United States and the Taliban, stipulate concrete steps relating to the above two issues and, according to its own words, 'paves the way' for intra-Afghan talks and a comprehensive ceasefire. The Agreement specifies 10^th of March as the starting date for intra-Afghan talks between the Taliban and 'Afghan sides' which presumably includes the government. It also clarifies that a comprehensive ceasefire will be 'an item of agenda' in these intra-Afghan talks.

This is an important step towards bringing an end one of the deadliest conflicts in the world. Yet this is impossible unless the two main belligerents – the Afghan government and the Taliban – resolve their differences and come to an agreement.

From this perspective, the US-Taliban Agreement offered advantages and illustrated failures. Setting the date for intra-Afghan talks and including a comprehensive ceasefire in the agenda were crucial steps. However, the Agreement stipulates certain steps that would have been better suited to intra-Afghan settings. The Agreement commits the United States to removing both US-imposed and UN-imposed sanctions against the Taliban. While this is a necessary step, it can be argued that this might have been better left to be resolved in intra-Afghan talks. After all, the Agreement only purported to resolve differences over the withdrawal of foreign forces and the sanctuaries of terrorist groups. Again, by facilitating the removal of these sanctions in an intra-Afghan setting, the United States would have facilitated crucial confidence-building measures that could have bridged the gap between the two main belligerents and allowed for immediate and tangible results.

In a similar vein, the promise of a prisoner exchange prior to intra-Afghan talks appears to be misconceived and lacking foresight. This was even more apparent, given the fact that the Afghan government had not consented to such an exchange. By including this as an agenda in intra-Afghan talks, the United States could have allowed this process to yield early and tangible results in an otherwise complicated and painstaking process. Instead, this provision became a roadblock to the process when President Ghani balked at the imposed timeline of the exchange.

The fact that the United States will make such seemingly unnecessary concessions or that it could have negotiated a better deal testifies to the impatience of the United States and President Trump with America's Longest War. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with a 'losing war' in Afghanistan. Given Trump's propensity to follow 'his gut', US insiders were well aware that he might at any moment decide to unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan. Given these pressures, it is understandable why Khalilzad thought an imperfect deal that sets the intra-Afghan process in motion might be better than no deal at all.

Afghan government in disarray

The only actor in this stage that has been caught unawares in the process has been the Afghan government. With only a few days left before the deadline for intra-Afghan talks, the government has yet to announce its delegation for talks and has instead been involved in yet another public spate with the United States over the latter's guarantees of prisoner exchange prior to the talks beginning.

The government's unease with a shadowy deal – the details of which it has not been fully made aware of – is understandable. Yet the steps it has taken to address the situation have been counterproductive. The government's decision to publicly lambast Khalilzad in Washington – accusing him of 'delegitimising' the government and harbouring personal ambitions – not only estranged Khalilzad, it also make the government look like an unreliable partner and an obstacle to Trump's desire to disengage from the country.

The government again locked horned with Khalilzad over the timing of the Presidential elections. Hoping to deliver on his deal before September 2019, the US Envoy sought to delay Afghan Presidential Elections so that such matters may be resolved in intra-Afghan settings with the Taliban. The government, however, saw this as a ploy by Khalilzad to seek a 'viceroy' role by setting up an interim government led by him. Khalilzad only relented when Trump derailed the talks in a Twitterstorm and declared the talks 'dead'.

The chasm between the two sides only widened as the elections were beset by a record low turnout and the results were bitterly disputed by the opposition. The ensuing fallout – with Abdullah Abdullah's camp declaring a 'parallel government' and President Ghani scheduling his inauguration two days before the US-Taliban Agreement – caused much dismay. President Ghani postponed his inauguration in the eleventh hour after a blunt US State Department communication that finally 'noted' President Ghani's win in the election and urged the parties not to 'focus on electoral politics' but to 'find a formula for a political settlement' through intra-Afghan negotiations.

The Afghan government has squandered crucial leverage that could have been brought to bear on both the US-Taliban Agreement and the intra-Afghan talks. Instead of relying on diplomatic channels, it has adopted a course of public confrontation and arousal of anti-US sentiments. In the Joint Declaration, the government agreed to a withdrawal timeline that ran contrary to US obligations under the Strategic Partnership Agreement and acquiesced to the lifting of sanctions against the Taliban by 29 May 2020 without reciprocal quid pro quo.

Rather than publicly undermining the US-agreed prisoner exchange, the government could have leveraged its legal right under the Partnership Agreement as well has its political right to object to the lifting of UN sanctions in order to gain favourable compromises in return for the exchange. Instead, its current approach has left the government more isolated and fractured at a time that it needs unity and consensus.

Through its actions, the government has estranged the US, consolidated the domestic opposition, and emboldened the Taliban. The international community increasingly sees the government of President Ghani as eccentric and a possible obstacle to lasting peace. The domestic opposition is increasingly more open to a compromise with the Taliban that displaces the incumbent President, and the Taliban increasingly see an opportunity to discredit the government and push for a military takeover rather than a political compromise.

What next?

The lengthy negotiations between the United States and the Taliban opened up many opportunities for the Taliban. The Taliban have broken new ground by testing the contours and cohesion of its organisation. They have developed an experienced negotiation team and strategy. They have built a consensus mechanism within its rank and file. With each passing day, they gain international recognition and legitimacy.

Meanwhile, the Afghan government has become fractured and marred in controversy. They have failed to build a cohesive legation or develop a comprehensive strategy. Over the last year, rather than build a unified front for the imminent talks, the government has continued to stumble in a desultory manner and more preoccupied with personality clashes and palace intrigue than facing what is likely to be an existential encounter.

It is time for the government to abandon its tried and failed methods, evaluate its strategy and build a new, co-designed and consensual strategy for the next phase of intra-Afghan talks. 

Ibraheem Thurial Bahiss has a LLM (Hons) in international law and a LLB/BA (Hons) with a specialization in International Relations and Security Studies (Waikato University). He conducts consultancy work at various government levels in Australia and is a long-time observer of Afghanistan politics.

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The article does not reflect the official opinion of the AISS.