PEACE WITH TERROR?

On February 29, the long-awaited news hit the headlines when the representatives of the Taliban terrorist movement and U.S. signed a peace agreement in Qatar to begin the process of resolving the multilateral armed conflict ongoing in Afghanistan for many years. The signatories were the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and deputy leader of Taliban, head of the Qatari political office, Mullah Abdullah Gani Baradar, also known as Mullah Baradar Akhund.

The same Taliban

Taliban is the Islamic fundamental political movement in Afghanistan also known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, recognised by the UN Security Council as a terrorist organisation. The same group of fundamental Islamists responsible for many terrorist acts in the past and the present. It is the Taliban that Americans and their allies launched a counter-terrorist operation against precisely after the events of 9/11. The same Taliban, which provided shelter to terrorist No. 1 Osama bin Laden, maimed and killed women for violating Sharia laws, practiced early marriages and destroyed cultural properties, such as the famous Buddha statues in Bamyan. Does the peace agreement mean that now, after 20 years, the United States realised that they can’t destroy the Taliban, who control, according to various sources, about half of the Afghan territory. Does the Taliban also figured that they are unable to cope with the Americans?

According to most observers, the essence of the agreements is rather vague and in general is as follows. First, the United States and its allies promised to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, including private security companies, advisers, support staff, etc. within 14 months. Within 140 days after the document becomes effective in Afghanistan, no more than 8,600 American soldiers should remain (according to open sources, approximately 13,000 Americans are serving in Afghanistan) in the country. The contingent of each of the allied countries will be reduced proportionally, and NATO will have to free five military bases. Secondly, the Taliban promised that the territory of Afghanistan will not be used as a springboard for international terrorist groups that threaten the U.S. security. Thus, the parties hope that the level of violence in Afghanistan will be reduced. Thirdly, the deal assumes the start of intra-Afghan negotiations to discuss, inter alia, the future political road map of the country. Moreover, it is assumed that representatives of the Taliban will be part of the future Afghan government. Finally, the agreement should strengthen trust between the parties through the planned mutual exchange of prisoners: five thousand held in Afghan prisons in exchange for thousand prisoners held by the Taliban.

Four reasons to doubt

At first glance, this is a pretty good start for a country that has long forgotten the times of peace. Upon closer inspection, however, the agreement between the Americans and the Taliban has many wormholes. The first and largest is that the signatories are not the first persons of respective sides (head of the Taliban movement Khaibatullah Akhundzada and the U.S. President Donald Trump). The U.S. Secretary the State, Mike Pompeo, although present at the ceremony, did not sign the document either. In his response at the press conference, Trump said that he had a telephone conversation with the Taliban leader and “it was a very good conversation.” But a few days before this statement, the American media reported that Trump was talking specifically with Mullah Abdullah Gani Baradar. According to Western and pro-Western media, most likely this has a definite, pre-planned meaning. Although Abdullah Gani Baradar is not even a deputy of Akhundzad (Sirajuddin Haqqani), he has a certain authority. It is known that he is a Pashtun, a close associate of the founder of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and according to other sources, his relative. He was captured by Pakistani intelligence on February 8, 2010 and later released at the request of the U.S. Allegedly, he was detained physically in order to have an authoritative negotiator in the future. That future has come.

By the way, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is also considered the leader of the Haqqani network, founded by his father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, supported the document. The New York Times even published, albeit unexpectedly, his article called What We, the Taliban, Want. In his manifesto addressed to the western world, Haqqani does not appear a terrorist at all, but almost a constructive, political activist-peacemaker who articulates with words such as “sovereignty”, “stability”, “international conventions”, and “dialogue”.

Yet another delicate question, despite the peace-loving tone of the key Taliban figure, is how exactly the peace regime will be respected. Who will guarantee the cessation of bloodshed if the Americans leave? There are also many assumptions about this. Firstly, the Americans do not leave immediately, and they may not leave at all. They may decide to leave some limited contingent or come up with some other option – to be on the spot or control the territory remotely. Such a development of events, by the way, was very quickly confirmed. Just a few days after the conclusion of truce with the Taliban, the U.S. launched an airstrike on the positions of the militants because they "actively attacked the checkpoint of Afghan government forces in the Nari Saraj area in Helmand." In addition, there are no structures that would control the number of American troops in Afghanistan and their withdrawal, but the Americans themselves. So, if the U.S. claims to have left Afghanistan, then Kabul, the Taliban, the entire international community will simply have to take this for granted. The same applies to the Taliban themselves, since there is no answer to the question who will verify the fulfillment of their obligations.

But the most confusing and painful question is what intra-Afghan negotiations mean. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was the state self-proclaimed by the Taliban, which controlled almost all of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and the Waziristan region in northern Pakistan (the so called Islamic State of Waziristan) since 2004. They still consider themselves legitimate and do not recognise the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. At the same time, the forces included in the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan are so diverse that it is difficult to list all their contradictions - they are divided into various clans and nationalities that are constantly at war with each other. So it is impossible to answer who will be the very authoritative negotiator on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. It may seem that it is the finest hour of President Ashraf Ghani, who is a graduate of the Columbia University, has prior experience in the US and the World Bank, is ranked among the 100 best thinkers in the world according to the British edition of Prospect, and is the author of Fixing Failed States (2008). But Ghani does not enjoy the authority in Afghanistan that the Western world bestowed upon him. In addition, according to the results of the last presidential elections in the country, there is a dual power actually formed in the controlled part of the country. Ghani’s main rival, formally the head of government Abdullah Abdullah, also declared himself in early March the head of state and took the oath. Abdullah previously announced the creation of an “inclusive government.” This brings up a more tense moment regarding the prisoners. So, the press secretary of the Afghan president Sadiq Sadiqqi noted that Kabul did not give any obligations to release five thousand prisoners, although everything seemed to be agreed with Ghani in the best Oriental traditions.

Surrender or reorganisation?

On the one hand, one can assumes that the U.S. military signed a surrender by agreement with the Taliban, thereby acknowledging the failure of its 18-year-old attempts to destroy the organisation. It is not at all surprising that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Jawad Zarif wrote on his Twitter account that “in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq or Yemen, the main problem is the United States.” The same opinions can be heard in the U.S. though. For example, even Republican Senator and Trump supporter Lindsey Graham openly expressed concern that the deal could "allow radical Islam to fully restore its position."

But is it really so? Is the U.S. really weak or is it just part of a carefully elaborated actions plan?

In this case, it is worth recalling the “Moscow format” of consultations on Afghanistan, created back in 2017 on the basis of an agreement between the special representatives of Afghanistan, India, Iran, China, Pakistan and Russia. In November 2018, Moscow held a closed meeting of deputy foreign ministers, special representatives and observers from Afghanistan (a delegation of the Supreme Peace Council of Afghanistan, which arrived to Moscow upon the instruction of President Ashraf Ghani), India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Russia, the U.S., Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The objective was to work out the conditions for initiating direct negotiations between the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan. In May 2019, another round of talks on a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan took place in May with the participation of the Taliban and Russian officials, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The Taliban delegation of 14 people was led by the same Mullah Baradar Akhund. In other words, Russia also tried to lead the Afghan settlement, but it seems that the Americans outsmarted Russians.

Logically, the Taliban poses a much greater threat for Russia than for the United States. The very argument that the Taliban promise not to use the territory of Afghanistan as a springboard for the activities of international terrorist groups that threaten the U.S. security is much more applicable to Russia, because the Taliban operates in close proximity to its borders. Given the number of migrants traveling from Central Asia to Russia every year, fears seem reasonable. In September 2019, Anatoly Sidorov, chief of the CSTO’s joint headquarters, openly warned that the terrorist groups of Afghanistan pose the main danger in the Central Asian region.

Recently, in anticipation of the agreement with the Taliban, Mike Pompeo made a trip to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where American officials of his level have not been for a long time. Pompeo then said that the United States is developing a new strategy for Central Asia, the main message of which is that Washington wants to provide an alternative option for the countries of the region. Indeed, China has long been actively interested in the Central Asian states; Iran is closely located; Russia has developed historical, cultural and economic ties with Central Asian states. In this case, it is clear who the United States is going to compete with.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Washington decided to reorganise its resources in Afghanistan. Moreover, the reason is quite serious - the military presence in this country costs a lot of money for Americans and spoils the image of the U.S. in the international arena. Either way, we will see the viability of the agreement with the Taliban and the reality of the withdrawal of American troops in the near future. We will also see if the agreement can really be the beginning of the process of returning peace to the citizens of Afghanistan or just be another page of rivalry between the strongest global powers.