President Trump has been intent on getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan since his first day in office. But against his better judgment, in 2017, Trump was swayed by his advisers, including then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then-Defense Secretary James Mattis, to send thousands of American reinforcements to prop up beleaguered Afghan government forces. Mattis and Tillerson sold Trump on a strategy aimed at convincing the Taliban that victory on the battlefield was unachievable and that the organization’s only option would be to negotiate a peace. The result has been a prolonged stalemate.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley called Trump’s Feb. 29 deal with the Taliban, which outlines conditions for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops by May 2021, “the best opportunity to end the war” and “the best hope for a peaceful future.”
What could go wrong? Here are four things to watch for:
The perfidy of the Taliban: The ink was barely dry on the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan when the Taliban made it clear that it felt no obligation to do anything beyond the minimum required by the letter of the deal, in which the organization promised to the best of its ability to prevent Afghan soil from being used against the security of the United States and to begin negotiations with the Afghan government.
“The Taliban has a history of extracting concessions in exchange for false assurances,” warned 20 Republican senators in a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before the deal was signed. “Any promises the Taliban may have made to the U.S. related to counterterrorism cannot be trusted, not least because the group is a longtime ally of al Qaeda.”
Esper voiced optimism at a Pentagon briefing after the agreement was signed, saying, “Our expectation is that the reduction in violence will continue. It would taper off until we got intra-Afghan negotiations, where it would ultimately consummate in a ceasefire.”
But testifying before a Senate committee two days later, Esper admitted that the Taliban were already violating the spirit of the deal. “The results so far have been mixed,” he said. “They’re honoring their piece of it in terms of not attacking U.S. and coalition forces but not in terms of sustaining the reduction of violence.”
On the day the agreement was signed, Esper said in Kabul, “Should the Taliban fail to honor their commitments … the United States would not hesitate to nullify the agreement.”
The killing of Americans: Last year, as the U.S. was preparing to sign essentially the same deal with the Taliban, a suicide car-bomb attack in Kabul killed an American soldier and 11 others in Kabul. Infuriated, Trump immediately canceled a planned secret meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David and called off peace negotiations. “If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway,” Trump wrote in a tweet.
So far, the Taliban have confined any killings to members of the Afghan security forces and civilians in a series of “small, low-level attacks on checkpoints,” according to testimony from Milley. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee that while “there were significant numbers of attacks, small attacks, they’re all beaten back.” Meanwhile, he said, “There’s a whole laundry list of these things that aren’t happening … no attacks in 34 provincial capitals. There’s no attacks in Kabul. There’s no high-profile attacks. There’s no suicide bombers. There’s no vehicle-borne suicide, no attack against U.S. forces, no attack against the coalition.”
If that changes, it could sink the deal.
The Afghan elections: The phased withdrawal of U.S. troops is tied to the Taliban engaging in “good faith” negotiations with the duly elected government of Afghanistan. But who is the legitimate leader of the Afghan people? The results of the September presidential elections are mired in accusations of vote-rigging and technical glitches.
Incumbent President Ashraf Ghani was declared the winner last month with 51% of the vote, but his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who got 40% of the ballots, has called the results illegal based on “fraudulent votes.” To avoid scuttling the nascent peace process, both men have agreed to step back for now. Ghani postponed his inauguration, and Abdullah halted his plan to set up a parallel government.
The U.S. has not taken sides, calling for the dispute to be settled through “constitutional and legal procedures.”
But Abdullah, who has been denied the presidency twice before in what he claimed were flawed elections, has indicated he will not accept the election results, which he has called a coup.
With Afghans fighting among themselves, will they be able to make a deal that brings the Taliban into the government?
The U.S. election: The agreement for the full withdrawal of U.S. troops begins with a drawdown from just over 12,000 troops to 8,600, followed by a pause to reassess. That initial redeployment will take about five months and will bring the number of American forces in Afghanistan to roughly the number that was there when Trump took office.
But the agreement with the Taliban is not a treaty. As Trump demonstrated when he ripped up the Iran nuclear deal, an agreement with an American president is only as good as the commitment of the currently serving president.
While Trump is clearly committed to getting all the troops out, should a Democrat be elected, the new president could reverse course. While front-runners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders both favor ending the 18-year conflict, they will no doubt hear the argument from the Pentagon and other advisers that U.S. interests dictate that some number of troops should remain in the country.
“We’re still in South Korea more than a half-century after 1953, when it was the poorest country of the world. Now, [it’s] one of the richest. We have twice as many troops in South Korea today as we do in Afghanistan,” said Peter Bergen, a national security analyst at CNN. “I think a persistent presence is perhaps a better way of framing this.”
Biden famously opposed President Barack Obama’s decision to surge 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2009, but that doesn’t mean he might not be persuaded to halt the drawdown, especially if it looks as though the Taliban might take control of the country.
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
