The Obama administration’s decision in 2014 to trade five imprisoned Taliban fighters for Bowe Bergdahl, the deserter captured by Afghan insurgents, continues to spawn ill consequences.
A quick review: The “Taliban Five” were U.S. detainees held in Guantánamo Bay until 2014. All had been high-ranking members of the pre-9/11 Afghan government that protected Osama bin Laden. All had direct ties to al Qaeda and other terror groups. And all were considered by U.S. intelligence agencies risks to the United States and its interests—several considered “high” risks. Against the pleas of top officials in the Pentagon and the CIA, Barack Obama chose to release the Taliban Five from detention and deliver them to Doha, Qatar, in exchange for Bergdahl.
A year earlier, the Obama administration had agreed to recognize the Taliban’s political office in Doha. Among the stipulations: The office was not to represent the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” since that was the name of the government the United States overthrew in late 2001. So when the Taliban’s Doha office opened in 2013, it called itself the representative of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” The Taliban has never had any intention of engaging in good-faith negotiations with the United States.
Five years later, the Trump administration is as eager as its predecessor to get out of Afghanistan. The Pentagon speaks of “ending” the war rather than winning it, and the president himself shows little interest in the theater outside of departure. The administration recently appointed Zalmay Khalilzad as envoy to broker a peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
That’s the same criminal junta we toppled in 2001 because it was aiding and harboring Osama bin Laden, a group that enforced sharia law, barred girls from attending school, terrorized the Afghan populace, and routinely executed political opponents and anyone deemed insufficiently pious.
There can be no meaningful peace settlement with the Taliban, and there is little indication that the group’s leaders want an agreement. In October, a Kandahar meeting between American and Afghan military officials was attacked by gunmen. Afghan general Abdul Raziq was killed in the attack, as were two other Afghans; American personnel were injured, too. The Taliban enthusiastically claimed responsibility. Such attacks are common. This is the group with whom the Trump administration expects Afghanistan’s democratically elected government to negotiate.
Now the final insulting irony: In early November, a Taliban spokesman announced that the Taliban Five were joining the group’s political office in Doha. The group already had the upper hand in the ongoing negotiations, realizing how desperate the Americans are to leave. The fact that their political office now includes these five terrorists is just rubbing our noses in it.
A little more than a year ago, President Trump announced an aggressive and realistic plan to win the war in Afghanistan without leaving precipitously and creating a vacuum for terrorist insurgencies to fill. That is what the United States did in Iraq in 2011, he warned, and “We cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in Iraq,” for the consequences would be catastrophic. He was right.
