US-Taliban deal is delayed if not quite dead
After months of delicate direct negotiations with the Taliban, the White House has called a halt
As US President Donald Trump pronounced talks with the Taliban "dead" on September 9, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani said a peace deal was impossible without a ceasefire. The halt to talks, even if temporary, gives Ghani breathing space to seek re-election unencumbered by talk of a delay or the installation of an interim government.
What next
An attempt to revive the peace talks is possible but will be difficult. Taliban leaders must choose between salvaging the process and committing to unending war -- the option favoured by harder-line commanders. Ghani will be happy to see talks founder, at least in this format, as their outcome looked to be more in the White House's interests than Afghanistan's.
Subsidiary Impacts
- The Trump administration has yet to clarify whether a partial troop withdrawal is going ahead.
- Ghani is likely to engage more with Washington now that Trump appears to share his worries about talks.
- The confusion offers Islamic State greater scope to attempt disruptive attacks and to win over discontented Taliban members.
Analysis
In a September 7 tweet, Trump revealed a planned meeting with senior Taliban representatives at Camp David the following day by announcing he had cancelled it because of a September 6 car bomb in Kabul that killed a US soldier and eleven other people.
The meeting was meant to allow Trump to close an almost-ready bilateral agreement with the Taliban, ahead of the September 11 anniversary that initiated the US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001.
US negotiators led by Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad have spent months in a series of meetings in Qatar with a Taliban delegation senior enough to have a direct line to the movement's leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.
US administration divided
The New York Times reports that Trump wanted to seal the deal himself, and to have the Afghan president on hand in the hope of persuading him and the insurgents to hold their first-ever meeting.
Ghani's government has not been part of the talks process and has expressed great reservations that it would result in US troops leaving while fighting continued.
The decision to cancel the Camp David meeting was taken on September 6, according to a source close to Ghani. It may have been, as Trump suggested, the car bombing in Kabul that prompted his last-minute change of heart. Yet the Taliban have carried out frequent attacks in Kabul since July 1, and the soldier was the 19th US national to die this year.
The opposition of US National Security Advisor John Bolton to the meeting was reportedly the immediate spark for his dismissal (see UNITED STATES: Bolton exit may boost moderate policy - September 11, 2019.)
Nevertheless, Trump may have concluded that Bolton was essentially right and that the Khalilzad process was so risky that it might undermine progress towards peace in Afghanistan and an opportunity to withdraw US forces, hence damaging Trump's chances of re-election.
Trump took control and then stepped back
Impossible demands
The biggest obstacle to Khalilzad's plans was the Taliban demand for an interim government as a precondition for intra-Afghan talks prior to a complete US withdrawal. The Taliban did not rule out negotiating with whoever was in power in Kabul but insisted this would only be possible once all US troops left Afghanistan.
Ghani, heading for a much-delayed presidential election on September 28, rejected talk of a replacement government (see AFGHANISTAN: President's peace plan - April 23, 2019).
Khalilzad tried to resolve these incompatible positions by encouraging the Taliban to talk to a delegation representative of the main Afghan political groupings, including some officials attending in a private capacity.
He also offered a partial US withdrawal up front, followed by a ceasefire, the launch of formal talks between the insurgents and a mixed Afghan delegation, and then gradual withdrawal of the remaining US troops. To get round Taliban objections to a permanent US presence, he explored ways of disguising the remaining contingent.
The Taliban seemed grudgingly willing to make concessions on these issues.
Process grinds to a halt
Khalilzad's manoeuvring was beginning to look like a way of getting Kabul and the Taliban into talks by stealth.
Ghani continued resisting. He did agree to a mixed delegation, but this was seen neither as fully representative nor as empowered to negotiate autonomously.
Complicating matters further, Trump tweeted on August 29 that he had decided on partial US withdrawal but planned to keep some troops in Afghanistan indefinitely.
This enraged Taliban negotiators, as it made it much more difficult for them to pretend that any long-term US presence would be non-military.
They were already concerned that Khalilzad was backtracking on earlier offers: a complete withdrawal and an interim government. They were also frustrated with the slow pace of negotiations and the failure of Afghan security forces to reciprocate after they refrained from urban military and terrorist attacks.
Taliban sources say that in June Haibatullah agreed, with a green light from Pakistan, to resume the terrorist campaign in Kabul from July 1, to signal impatience to Washington. After Trump's August 29 tweet, Haibatullah approved a resumption in urban offensives.
The Taliban subsequently mounted attacks on Kunduz and Pul-i Khumri (see AFGHANISTAN: Attack shows risks of separate deal - September 2, 2019).
The Taliban negotiators also held out on specific commitments to take action to expel jihadist groups from Afghanistan, as the terms of the draft agreement envisaged.
Trump gets involved
Khalilzad tried to get the agreement signed nonetheless, but in early September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to sign off on a draft of the document.
At that point, the initiative shifted to Trump to decide whether to go ahead. The Camp David plan suggests he was minded to do so despite objections from the likes of Pompeo and Bolton.
Winners and losers
Ghani will be satisfied with the outcome. He fought the Khalilzad-led process all the way, seeing it as a threat to Afghanistan, since the Taliban showed no intention of halting the war against his army, and because of the spectre of an interim government (see AFGHANISTAN: Deal will sideline Kabul's interests - August 12, 2019).
He came under pressure to postpone the presidential election to make space for possible negotiations with the Taliban.
With the talks suspended, if not halted altogether, the election can go ahead. Ghani remains the favourite. One of his main opponents, Hanif Atmar, has withdrawn, potentially boosting the chances of the other major candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, currently chief executive (akin to prime minister).
The White House has failed to deliver on the planned breakthrough deal, although US officials say they are planning a further meeting with the Taliban and the process may not be as conclusively dead as Trump indicated.
On balance, no deal suits the Ghani administration better than a bad one
Pakistan is embarrassed by the failure: it faces a dilemma over how to use its influence with Taliban leaders to deliver a rapprochement. It risks falling from US favour as partially responsible for the debacle (see PAKISTAN/US: Khan trip will bring modest boost to ties - July 15, 2019).
For Haibatullah and his Leadership Council, the obvious next step is to carry out their threat to unleash maximum violence. Doing so could wreck any chance of further negotiations. Haibatullah's Pakistani contacts may instead urge him to send some positive signals to Washington in the hope of saving the process.
However, he must also handle hard-line Taliban figures who always predicted the United States would never act in good faith (see AFGHANISTAN: Taliban mull shift from jihad to politics - March 19, 2019). Torn between these competing views, he may find his leadership challenged more than ever.
