Deal offers hope for ending Afghan war

WASHINGTON－The United States has signed a deal with the Afghan Taliban, framing the US troops' future exit from Afghanistan and of intra-Afghan negotiations.

Though the agreement provides hope for the US to end its almost two-decade war as well as bringing lasting peace in the conflict-stricken country, thorny issues still remain, experts said.

Representatives of the US and the Taliban signed the long-awaited pact in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Saturday, calling for a gradual withdrawal of US troops if the Taliban negotiates with the Afghan government and cuts ties with terrorist groups.

According to a joint statement that the US and Afghan governments issued before the signing, the US will reduce its troops in Afghanistan from about 13,000 to 8,600 within 135 days after signing the agreement.

Further withdrawal will depend on the Taliban meeting of conditions related to counterterrorism, the statement said.

Speaking at a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani expressed confidence that the country will "have a national consensus on peace".

"We have the political will and the capacity to make peace because of the resilience of our society, the dynamism of our economy and the capability of our state. Afghanistan is a sovereign state. It is an independent country."

The pact came after more than a year of on-and-off negotiations between the two sides and a "sevenday reduction of violence" across Afghanistan.

"The agreement is Washington's best hope of ending the longest American War," said Carter Malkasian, who served as senior adviser to the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2015 to 2019.

"The United States has missed too many opportunities over the course of its long Afghan war. It need not do so again."

Under the deal the US will reduce its troops to 8,600 in Afghanistan within 135 days and with its NATO allies withdraw the remaining troops in the following 14 months if the Taliban sticks to its commitments.

The pact also sets the stage for intra-Afghan talks, which are expected to begin shortly.

The value of the agreement lies in "opening the door to an Afghan peace process", said Laurel Miller, director of the Asia Program at the think tank International Crisis Group.

Pact not a 'peace deal'

Experts also cautioned that it is a step toward negotiations but not a "peace agreement" itself.

Important though it is, the agreement is not a peace deal, Miller said.

"It is a chance to get one. The agreement will break the logjam of the Taliban's long-standing unwillingness to sit in talks with the Afghan government and other Afghan power brokers without first achieving an American commitment to withdraw forces."

The deal itself would neither end the war nor bring all American troops home, wrote John Allen, president of the Brookings Institute, in an article published at the think tank's website.

To Allen and two other co-writers of the article, what is more essential is the second phase of the deal which includes a complete US-NATO troop departure and a real Afghan power-sharing agreement.

"At present, we are a long way from any such agreement－even though President Donald Trump would love to be able to announce a US withdrawal by November," Allen said, taking into account the US elections at the end of the year.

James Cunningham, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, said: "It is to be hoped that this US-Taliban agreement will indeed lead to vastly decreased violence and casualties on both sides."

Future threats

Experts say the next stage of talks will be really tough as they will have to tackle thornier issues, which could consume a year or even longer.

"The withdrawal of US military personnel could allow a terrorist threat to grow," Malkasian wrote in an article published at Foreign Affairs magazine.

To Cunningham, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, what the US needs is "caution and realism".

"That … requires that the United States, under either a Republican or Democratic president, dispense with the argument that the 'forever war' in Afghanistan can be ended without regard to the consequences for Afghanistan and the impact on US security.

"America might find a way out of this war, at least temporarily－but Afghanistan most likely will not, and the region could again descend into the type of anarchy that allowed al-Qaeda to establish a foothold there more than 20 years ago.

"That is not an experiment that anyone should want to run," he said.