OPINION:
Afghanistan’s peace deal went ugly early. It took just a few days for the Taliban to renege on the peace agreement they signed on the last day of February. By the time U.S. forces appropriately retaliated with airstrikes, the Taliban had conducted 30 attacks, causing fatalities among civilians and Afghan security forces.
This was not unexpected by anyone who has watched the negotiations closely. The new developments don’t mean the end of the process, but they do give an indication of just how difficult things will be. The final withdrawal of U.S. forces is to be condition-based, and that is where the United States still has leverage. We need to keep in mind that — as bad as we want out — the Taliban want us out even more. As President Trump warned, we reserve the right to hit and hit hard if the other side blatantly violates the terms of the agreement and that promise was kept. We should also use that leverage to ensure that some moral commitments that we made to Afghan women and girls during the war are not entirely forgotten in the rush to peace.
The Taliban stated that they will still refrain from striking Americans, but resumed attacks against Afghan forces because the Kabul government is balking at freeing 5,000 Taliban prisoners agreed to in the U.S.-Taliban talks. Anyone who followed the process knew that this would be an issue because the prisoners belonged to the Afghan government and were not America’s to bargain with in the first place. The Taliban didn’t fall off the proverbial turnip truck yesterday, and were fully aware that any terms of release would have to include Kabul government participation. Those prisoners are the government’s biggest bargaining chip, and Kabul’s senior leadership would be foolish not to use it to maximum advantage. Like the agreement itself, any prisoner movement should be based on certain conditions reached between the central government and the Taliban. For example, 500 released when talks with the government begin, another 500 for the first three months of non-attacks on government forces, and so-on.
U.S. air strikes on the locales where violations occur should be of sufficient intensity to cause Taliban forces to cease attacks, but with a mechanism built into the process to return to the table and allow negotiations to continue. In the meantime, training of Afghan forces — particularly in the areas of logistics and aviation — should continue even if conducted in a third country. This would allow reductions in American personnel to continue in Afghanistan proper. The American message to the Taliban should be that this withdrawal can be a very long process if they continue to step outside the negotiating framework.
This brings us to the status of Afghan women. Freeing women from the iron grip of Taliban mistreatment was not an initial objective in the Afghan intervention as Joe Biden has made painfully clear in his statements on the subject. If the status of women in society as a “go to war” issue, we’d be in armed conflict with half the Muslim world. Nevertheless, the improvement of the status of Afghan women — particularly in education — became what the military calls an implied mission as operations continued. In an op-ed in The New York Times, a Taliban negotiator made it clear that the status of women in areas under their control would remain static under their interpretation of Islamic law — meaning second-class status.
Any final settlement between Afghans should allow those women in areas under Taliban control who do not desire to live under their interpretation of Islamic law to move to zones of government control. The same should hold true for women in government-controlled areas who are offended by the more liberal approach to the rights of females in places like Kabul and other major urban areas. So far, the United Nations has been virtually useless in pursuing peace in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Refereeing an agreement allowing women to cross boundaries voluntarily would be a good place for U.N. observers to play a positive role in the peace process. The United States should use its remaining leverage in the process to that end.
We still have leverage. A Taliban agreement to help keep out all foreign fighters — including al Qaeda and ISIS — fulfills the original end state of our 2001 intervention. Although the terms of a final settlement will be an Afghan affair, our message going forward should be; “The withdrawal isn’t over until we say it’s over; it’s your choice.”
• Gary Anderson lectures on Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He served as a civilian adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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