Over the course of 24 hours, the Afghan president and two senior US officials separately proposed that the increased levels of Taliban violence could force US troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 withdrawal date set out in the treaty United States with the militant Islamic group last year.
“It’s hard to see how we get there, just where we are now,” Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told a news conference on Thursday. “The Taliban are not fulfilling their commitment to reduce violence and renounce their ties with al-Qaeda.”
Referring to the February 2020 treaty, signed in Doha, Qatar, as an agreement that the new government “inherited”, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on Friday that the Biden team “looks closely” at the extent to which the Taliban are fulfilling their obligations in terms of the agreement. “In this context, we will make decisions about our power structure and our diplomatic strategy going forward,” Sullivan said on a U.S. Web site from the Institute for Peace.
During a Friday broadcast with the Aspen Strategy Group, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who spoke with Foreign Minister Antony Blinken the previous day, apparently grabbed Kirby’s comments. Referring to “the Pentagon’s initial announcements that the level of violence is unacceptable and the Taliban is responsible for it,” Ghani said US officials would probably decide to send a signal to the Taliban that the US is here to bring peace. secure and not to retreat and leave the field open to them. ”
All three officials said the Taliban had failed to fulfill its obligations under the treaty to cut ties with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that targeted the United States and its allies.
However, some of their specific complaints may lead the United States to criticize them for trying to push the goalposts over what is required of the Taliban before the remaining 2,500 US forces leave Afghanistan.
In addition to the terms of the agreement on al-Qaeda, Sullivan said the treaty requires “them to significantly reduce levels of violence and contribute to a ceasefire.” Despite this, it appears that the agreement, as published on the State Department’s website, does not contain such a commitment to reduce Taliban violence.
Since the signing of the agreement, the Taliban have refrained from attacking US forces, with the result that there have been no US fatalities in Afghanistan since February. However, there was no disappointment in their assaults on Afghan security forces.
This is the fact and the fear of what could happen if US and NATO troops withdraw seems to put US officials to rest. One U.S. government source said there had been a debate among U.S. officials for months about how to proceed.
“It is time to end this war, but we want to do it responsibly, we want to do it in accordance with our national security interests and those of our Afghan partners,” Kirby said on Thursday. “We have a commitment to Afghanistan and the Afghan national security forces that we take very seriously.”
The Taliban issued a statement on Friday (before Ghani and Sullivan spoke), saying it was “in the interests of both Afghanistan and the United States that all foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan in accordance with the Doha Agreement.”
In turn, Ghani was clear about what would happen if the Taliban were allowed to continue their attacks on its forces without fighting with the presence of the US and NATO in Afghanistan. “If the Taliban realize that they can win by force,” Ghani said, “they will not let go.”
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