Sen. Marco Rubio offered a grim assessment of the situation in Afghanistan following a peace deal between the United States and the Taliban.
The Florida Republican said Wednesday on Fox News that he thinks the likeliest outcome of a U.S. troop withdrawal would be Taliban rule but also said having U.S. forces remain indefinitely was not a “feasible” solution.
“I don’t think we can trust them,” Rubio said of the Islamic militant group. The U.S. overthrew the Taliban in 2001 and disbanded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. A peace deal was signed on Saturday by U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, although that deal has already run into some major obstacles.
“The bottom line is that the Taliban, what they want, is to institute a severe version of sharia law and no elections. That’s what they want. They have the battlefield advantage over the government of Afghanistan,” Rubio said.
Despite the peace deal, the Taliban has resumed attacks against the Afghan government. U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett announced Wednesday that the U.S. conducted a “defensive” airstrike against the militant group.
Rubio said that, despite a troop withdrawal likely to result in Taliban rule, he doesn’t see a path forward with U.S. forces remaining in the region.
“I’ve reached the point now where I’ve come to believe that we would have to be there forever to keep the Taliban from getting what they want, and a permanent U.S. presence in Afghanistan is just not feasible,” Rubio said. “So, I hope this works out, but I want to be frank with everybody. I think the likeliest outcome, at the end of the day, is, once the U.S. leaves, within a short period of time the Taliban will retake the country, will reinstitute sharia, will not have elections.”
Rubio said the “No. 1 concern” is that the Taliban not allow foreign terrorist groups such as al Qaeda to operate within the country. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Taliban harbored terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the agreement includes a Taliban “commitment to break with al Qaeda.” Despite that, Republican Sen. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said none of the classified documents she has seen prove Pompeo’s assertion to be true.
Rubio said he holds out hope that the Afghan government will be able to prevail over the Taliban but said such is unlikely if history is precedent.
“The hope is that there would be an Afghan government that could assume control and control the country and be an alternative and push out the Taliban, but that’s an effort that has been going on now for over a decade, and it hasn’t seemed to work that way,” the senator said.
He pointed out that there is currently a power struggle between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who was declared the winner of a controversial September election last month, and a faction that supports opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who the Independent Election Commission said lost to Ghani by a razor-thin margin.
“The Afghan government is divided. Two people claim to be president. They can’t even figure that part of it out,” Rubio said. “We would have to be there forever to prevent the Taliban from taking over the country at this point.”
“I hope that something different turns out to be true, but we can’t be there forever,” he added.
