US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters that even with the drawdown, US troops will continue training, advising and assisting Afghan forces.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo struck a cautious tone over the weekend discussing the agreement, and others, including 22 House Republicans, have expressed serious concerns. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in a statement that “releasing thousands of Taliban fighters, lifting sanctions on international terrorists, and agreeing to withdraw all U.S. forces in exchange for promises from the Taliban, with no disclosed mechanism to verify Taliban compliance, would be reminiscent of the worst aspects of the Obama Iran nuclear deal.”
Brett McGurk, who served as Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL said on Twitter that, “The withdrawal provisions in this Afghanistan agreement seem far more comprehensive than advertised. It’s a TOTAL withdrawal of ALL American and NATO forces within 14 months,” Brett McGurk, the administration’s former special representative to the coalition against the Islamic State, said on Twitter. “That would likely produce a gradual collapse of the state, civil war, and the Taliban back in Kabul.”
Numerous national security experts, including Cipher Brief Expert and Board Member, General Jack Keane and Cipher Brief Special Advisor General David Petraeus have publicly called for the U.S. to keep some permanent, military presence in Afghanistan to ensure that the progress achieved there since 9-11 is not lost.
Concerns over a resurgence of ISIS, Al-Qaeda or other extremist groups, another Afghan civil war and a potential Taliban return to power are scenarios that worry many opponents of the deal. But President Trump campaigned on getting the U.S. out of “endless wars” and after nearly 20 years of fighting, and more than 2,000 U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan, many feel it’s time to leave.
Background:
- The U.S. and the Taliban singed a formal agreement on February 29, 2020 in Doha, Qatar.
- The agreement provides a timeline for a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan of “all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement.”
- The deal also lays out requirements for a ceasefire, intra-Afghan negotiations and an immediate prisoner swap between the Taliban and the Afghan government that could see up to 5000 Taliban prisoners released by March 10.
- The deal was signed without a representative from the Afghan government participating.
- The agreement has hit its first snag as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani reportedly rejects prisoner swap part of deal.
- The peace deal followed a 7-day reduction in violence period and comes after a year of difficult negotiations between the two sides.
- ‘The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’, is a title used by the Taliban that the U.S. government acknowledges in the agreement.
- The Taliban are an extremist and militant Islamic organization that has been struggling for power in Afghanistan over the past twenty-five years. From 1996-2001 they ruled Afghanistan.
- The Taliban were routed in the days following 9-11 as the U.S. began its campaign to defeat Al-Qaeda.
- The Taliban returned from defeat to regain significant presence in the country and have been waging an insurgency and deadly campaign to rid Afghanistan of all foreign forces.
- According to the Long War Journal, the Taliban currently control 19% of Afghan districts, while the central government controls 33%, with 48% of Afghan districts defined as “contested”.
The agreement, with all of the concerns that come with it, has been years in the making. Last year at this time, The Cipher Brief talked with our experts about what then-slow moving talks could mean for both sides.
This time, we revisited Cipher Brief Experts Doug Wise and Nick Fishwick to get their thoughts on the deal. Wise is a former Special Operations veteran, a career CIA officer and former Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Fishwick retired in 2012 as a senior member of the British Foreign Office with more than 30 years of experience.
What is the general reaction in the UK regarding the peace deal with the Taliban?
Nick Fishwick, Former Senior Member, British Foreign Office
The defence/security community has invested a lot in working with Afghan government partners to build up a more prosperous, democratic country; the Taliban have killed and maimed hundreds of British soldiers over the last 18 years and of course our Afghan partners have lost many more. It’s not just a question of perpetuating a state that resists ISIS and Al Qaeda. It’s about developing literacy, women’s rights, people’s ability to live normal lives. On the other hand, we have to accept that progress there has been at best, patchy. The conflict can’t go on forever and peace is the great prize, so long as it does not mean wasting the progress that’s been made since 2001.
What is your overall reaction regarding the peace deal?
Doug Wise, Former Deputy Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
I've been on record for the longest time to say we need to do whatever we can do to bring this forever war to a close, because the sad reality is that even with the sunk costs we've paid in over 2,000 American lives, we're just not going to ever recover that cost. Also important is that no matter what the sacrifice is from here on out, it's not going to materially change the outcome in Afghanistan.
Wise: We need to be prepared for the fact that the Taliban is not going to be fully compliant. Whether they become noncompliant on major red line issues, I don't know. But the fact of that the matter is, the Taliban is a loose Confederation but they're not totally in control of all of their subordinate elements. The American people and the policymakers need to be prepared for the Taliban violating certain elements of the agreement and then we're going to have to decide whether to continue with our part of the bargain, even in the face of an imperfect compliance by the Taliban.
Do you support the notion that any deal with the Taliban should be fully transparent with the public?
Fishwick: I think if you want “completely transparent” diplomacy then you would be better off with, say, Julian Assange as your Secretary of State rather than Mr. Pompeo. Of course, it’s right to be deeply sceptical of any deal that relies on Taliban “assurances” so the mechanism to monitor Taliban behaviour over the next 14 months has to be robust and the US has to be prepared If necessary to halt or reverse troop withdrawal. But I don’t believe in “open diplomacy”.
Wise: Any agreement that our nation enters into, particularly with a terrorist organization, I think the elements should be made public. I think even if we don't walk away from the agreement in the face of massive American public and legislative criticism, the fact of the matter is that the United States needs to follow through on this if they have any hope of extricating themselves from Afghanistan. I think the administration is going to, at least for the time being, when the wheels of withdrawal start to move, they'll make the provisions of the agreement public. We are a democracy and transparency is the coin of the realm in the democracy to hold our government accountable.
Is an Afghan future that sees the Taliban return to power acceptable for the West?
Fishwick: Most Afghans don’t support the Taliban and remember that it’s a pretty amorphous, mostly Pashtun group or loose set of groups. Non-Pashtun Afghans, which is probably over 50%, don’t support them and even in the 1990s, the Tajik Northern Alliance was never completely defeated. I am not sure the Taliban are strong enough to take Kabul now if the negotiations broke down. Regionally and locally in many parts of the country you will have to legitimise Taliban supporters and fighters and I don’t see that as a necessary spoiler. But the danger would be if Taliban hardliners seized key ministries and tried to bully the country back into the 1990s and the anti-ISIS assurances started to fray.
Wise: The purpose of the agreement is for us to leave and them to have an opportunity to return to Afghanistan and return to whatever level of governance that the Taliban leadership wants to seek. You'll notice that at least the media reporting says that Zalmay Khalilzad and Mullah Baradar, who happens to be a genocidal maniac by the way, and a terrorist in his own right; were there with Pompeo as witnesses. Baradar's not a human rights advocate by any means.
But notice the one witness that was missing was a representative of the Afghan government. I don't know whether that was by consent where the Afghan government said ‘we don't have an issue with this, but it would be politically difficult for us to be there in case it turns out to be bad’, or whether they were excluded, but the fact of the matter is that this agreement is just one half of a whole. And the other half is the Afghan government which now needs to negotiate its own agreement in terms of power sharing and governance sharing with the Taliban. I think, similar to Iraq, the notion that an American presence and the extermination of Al-Qaida and the reduction in the number of violent terrorists of Taliban or Haqqani origin that exist in Afghanistan, will somehow produce a pluralistic, Jeffersonian style democracy, is as bad a fantasy for Afghanistan as it was for Iraq.
Afghanistan is not a nation, it's a country. And there's a distinct difference. There's a homogeneity, a unity and a sense of common purpose for the betterment of Afghanistan and the Afghan people that all is connoted when you use the term nation. But when you use term country, it doesn't necessarily imply that. This is a country that's never been governed centrally, but by powerful warlords. And even the current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, for example, has spent as much time out of Afghanistan than he has inside. The average Afghan citizen who isn't close to the Ashraf Ghani administration, has no commonality with him. He lived in the US, he lived in Western Europe. He has a PhD from Columbia University, and worked for the World Bank. He’s a very accomplished political academician, but the fact of the matter is that he's viewed as an expat by many in Afghanistan. So, if you're a poppy grower or you're a wheat grower or you're a merchant or you're somebody in the power structure of a village, you have nothing in common with anybody in the Afghan government. And then if you're a Pashtun and you look at the current Vice President of Afghanistan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is an ethnic Uzbek you’ve hardly have any affinity with him from an ethnic standpoint. And when you consider the history between Mullah Baradar, and the Taliban’s brutal campaign against the Hazaras in the north of Afghanistan, it's going to be interesting to watch the political negotiations between these groups.
(Editor’s note- Dostum also escaped an assassination attempt in 2019 for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.)
Should the sanctions against the Haqqani network remain in place?
Wise: We need to keep the sanctions on the Haqqani family because I draw a clear distinction between them and the Taliban. And the Haqqani family arguably has more American blood on its hands than the Taliban. The Taliban would argue that they had no choice but try to kill Americans, and it was forced upon them. But the Haqqani family made a willful decision on their part to murder American women and men in uniform in Afghanistan. So, we can't let them go at this point for sure.
What should the West’s posture towards Pakistan and the ISI be regarding Afghanistan in the aftermath of a deal with the Taliban?
Nick Fishwick, Former Senior Member, British Foreign Office
A peace deal can’t succeed without the active support of Pakistan. There are some vital regional players, but Pakistan is the single most important. The West should keep its eyes open, remember history but do what it can to get active Pakistan buy-in and support over the months and years ahead. This will be challenging and growing mistrust between India and Pakistan could also threaten the sustainability of the deal.
Doug Wise, Former Deputy Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
If you think about it, the Taliban exist in Pakistan, the Haqqani family exists in Pakistan, arguably supported by half of ISI-D (while the other half is just trying to do counterterrorism). But I think the Pakistani government is going to be fine with this agreement because it means all of these guys can go back home to Afghanistan which would be a huge problem solved for the government of Pakistan. And Pakistan may have some of their influence diminished a bit because their leverage over the Taliban and the Haqqanis has been that they provided them safe haven. But I still think that the years of quid pro quo, that gratitude, if I can use that term, out of the Haqqani family and the Taliban, will remain toward Pakistan. Pakistan still will be able to leverage and influence the behavior of these two entities. And I think having the Americans gone will remove a huge amount of friction and tension in the whole South Asian region. And even India is probably going to welcome this agreement because having a less than on edge Pakistan and a reasonably stable Afghanistan I think is something that most South Asian nations are going to support.
Do you support a western led intelligence, counterterrorism and special operations capability that would remain in Afghanistan on a longer-term basis?
Fishwick: Yes, so long as the Afghans consent to it, and the hope would be that in time it would no longer be western led. There are some very gifted, admirable people in the Afghan security structures who are capable of giving the right leadership when circumstances are right. If terrorists come back into Afghanistan in the way Bin Laden did in the 90s that will be terrible for our safety and it will destroy Afghanistan’s chances of finally developing into a properly functioning country. The people of Afghanistan deserve more than this.
Looking Ahead:
Issues that we can certainly expect to further complicate an already complicated situation will also potentially include Russia’s direct engagement in Afghanistan. Russia has a now predictable practice of filling in the gaps left by US forces.
And the potential resurgence of ISIS and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is something that experts and analysts will be looking for, as it’s unlikely that even if the Taliban are sincere in their counterterrorism assurances, they possess the capability to completely prevent those groups from having a presence in the country.
Pakistan’s role as regional influencer and supporter of the Taliban, and overall uncertainty regarding U.S. policy, long-term objectives and commitment to the region, along with Iran’s involvement could mean instability will remain in Afghanistan for some time.
President Trump has said that he believes the Taliban do want to demonstrate that this deal is credible. “I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show that we’re not all wasting time,” Trump said. If “bad things happen, we’ll go back . . . so fast, with a force like nobody’s ever seen. I don’t think that will be necessary. I hope it’s not necessary.”
Cipher Brief Researcher Kira Simons contributed to this report.
Join Cipher Brief Experts Doug Wise and Nick Fishwick at The Cipher Brief Threat Conference March 22-24 in Sea Island, GA. Seats are currently sold out, but you can apply for a spot on the waiting list here.
