The White House’s decision to abandon withdrawal timelines for U.S. forces in Afghanistan and funnel thousands more troops into the war-torn nation will ensure the Taliban’s defeat, leaving the terror group no other option but to head to the negotiation table, says the top American commander in the country.
The Afghan terror group that controlled the country up until the 2001 U.S. invasion “are the enemies of the entire world,” Gen. John Nicholson, head of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said during a briefing in Kabul Thursday.
“The Taliban cannot win on the battlefield” under the conditions set by Trump administration’s new Afghan war plan, the four-star general said, adding that “it is time for them to join the peace process.”
During his prime-time address Monday night to announce the new way forward in Afghanistan, Mr. Trump said one of the end goals for his new military strategy is to force the Taliban into the peace process. Mr. Trump alluded to Washington’s overt support for negotiations with the Taliban, and their potential political role in a postwar Afghanistan during the speech.
“Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Mr. Trump told the crowd of U.S. service members gathered Monday at Fort Meyer in Arlington, Virginia.
“But nobody knows if or when that will ever happen,” the commander in chief quickly added.
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated the administration’s goal of brokering peace in Afghanistan via the president’s new war strategy.
“What I can tell you is that the ultimate goal is a peaceful settlement between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban, that protects our interests and protects American lives,” she told reporters at the White House.
Aside from the military aspect of the new war plan, administration officials are looking to ensure “we have an integrated strategy that puts all of our American power — diplomatic, economic, and military — in a way that’s sustainable and cost-effective,” Mrs. Sanders said.
Gen. Nicholson’s comments echoed those of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who doubled down on Mr. Trump’s thinly-veiled assertion the Taliban could have a role in a postwar Afghanistan, saying the White House is fully prepared to support Taliban peace talks.
“I think the president was clear this entire effort is intended to put pressure on the Taliban, to have the Taliban understand you will not win a battlefield victory,” Mr. Tillerson told reporters Tuesday. “We may not win one, but neither will you. So at some point, we have to come to the negotiating table and find a way to bring this to an end.”
Mr. Trump’s decision to implement a results-based strategy for ending the Afghan war could give Kabul the political breathing room it needs to “come to terms with this insurgency” and restart talks, said Thomas Spoehr, a retired Army three-star general who served as second-in-command of all U.S. forces in Iraq during the 2011 withdrawal from the country.
“Peace talks are not essential,” said Mr. Spoehr, who is now a senior defense analyst at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. “But if [Kabul] does not come to a political agreement with the Taliban, they will never control 100 percent of Afghanistan, 100 percent of the time.”
Afghanistan and Pakistan had agreed to hold peace talks with the Taliban in 2013, coinciding with the Taliban’s unprecedented move to open a political office in Doha that year. At the time, officials in the Obama administration saw the potential talks as a vehicle to help accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country by 2014. But Pakistan’s decision to withdraw from the talks eventually scuttled any effort to reach a deal with the terror group.
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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