Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is reportedly preparing to comply with a Taliban prisoner release that would trigger the start of intra-Afghan peace talks, but security experts and military commanders foresee a rocky road to peace while the U.S. troop withdrawal hangs in the balance.
“We don’t need to trust them, we don’t need to like them, we don’t need to believe anything they say, we need to observe,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, said about the Taliban at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday morning.
The intra-Afghan talks scheduled to begin Tuesday follow the signing of a “pathway to peace” agreement Feb. 29 between the United States and the Taliban, which calls for a full troop withdrawal in a 14-month time frame.
“We will have a good opportunity to observe and get the answers to those questions,” McKenzie said, describing a U.S. troop drawdown from 14,000 to 8,600 by mid-summer, dependent on conditions on the ground.
The Heritage Foundation’s Luke Coffey will tell the House Foreign Affairs Committee this afternoon that the 400,000-strong, battle-tested Afghan military will suffice to protect the country from being taken over by the Taliban after U.S. and NATO forces exit.
“To paraphrase Lawrence of Arabia,” Coffey told the Washington Examiner ahead of his testimony to address prospects for peace in Afghanistan. “Is it better that they do it tolerably than we do it perfectly?”
Coffey served in the U.S. military in Afghanistan in 2006, as a defense policy adviser for the British Conservative Party from 2006 to 2011, and now leads Heritage’s Afghanistan policy team.
“These talks are not going to be smooth,” he warned, noting that the U.S. needs to be prepared for a turbulent period where talks start and stop and may collapse. “But it’s a reasonable and realistic and responsible approach to take after 19 years of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.”
McKenzie admitted CENTCOM has no good options for reentering the theater after a full withdrawal, but a collapse of the Afghan government is not likely.
“We should not assume that they’ll run to victory as we withdrawal,” McKenzie said of the Taliban, which he said only polls about 12% popular support in Afghanistan.
Coffey agreed that the Taliban has a much-reduced capacity than it did before Sept. 11, 2001.
“Even if every single international soldier left, I don’t believe the Taliban has the ability to take over the country,” he said. “The Taliban are nothing like they were in 1996 when they went into Kabul with tanks and helicopters.”
Coffey argued that at its peak, the Taliban controlled more than 90% of the country and the capital, and now they hold just 11% of the districts.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said last week that he assured his visiting British counterpart, Ben Wallace, that the U.S. troop withdrawal was “conditions-based.”
“On Afghanistan, we will remain in close consultation as the peace process moves forward and the all important intra-Afghan negotiations commence,” Esper said. “We will retain in Afghanistan the necessary capabilities to protect our service members and allies and support the Afghan Security Forces.”
The U.S. acted quickly to stem a Taliban attack of an Afghan provincial checkpoint last week, sending in drones to fire on the Taliban forces and shore up the Afghan military position.
Coffey said even if the Taliban waits out the 14-month withdrawal period before attempting to take over Kabul with some 20,000-30,000 locally-based forces, the U.S. will likely not return but strike with air power.
“Let’s say all the US forces leave after 14 months, and then the Taliban say, ‘Haha, tricked you,’ and then they start these massive offensives,” he said. “I don’t think the U.S. will bring back large numbers of troops again. But I’m almost certain airstrikes and drone strikes and high-end Special Forces would probably be used.”
Echoing Esper’s description of the coming months in Afghanistan as a “long, windy, bumpy road,” Coffey believes the intra-Afghan talks are not going to be easy, but if they collapse, so will the U.S.-Taliban agreement.
“The number one goal of the United States is to make sure that Afghanistan no longer becomes a safe area for transnational terrorism,” he said. “That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.”
