Hawks lobby Trump to back out of the peace process
Hawks would like to see US troops remain in Afghanistan. However, if the US insists on keeping troops in Afghanistan any deal with the Taliban is likely off. However, this would be fine with the hawks and no doubt with the US military-industrial complex as profits from arms and equipment sales will continue. No doubt they will argue that the war is also creating jobs.
Trump often inconsistent on war issues
Although Trump in his presidential campaigning lashed out at US involvement in useless wars and promised to withdraw troops, in practice he can sometimes given in to pressure by hawks and do the opposite. Although he still claims to want troop cuts he recently walked away from an agreement with the Taliban after a US soldier was killed in an attack. At the time, there was no cease fire in effect.
The recent Taliban US peace agreement
On February 29 the US and the Taliban signed a four part peace agreement after months of talks in Doha Qatar. As part of the agreement US troops in Afghanistan would be reduced from 13,000 at present to 8,600 within 135 days of the deal. Troops would be fully withdrawn with 14 months. US troops would thus remain in Afghanistan for more than a year. If the Taliban did not keep their provisions in the deal obviously they might remain.
Another part of the deal involved a confidence-building prisoner swap releasing imprisoned Taliban as well as those imprisoned by the Taliban. However, the Afghan government was not a party to negotiations and claimed that the US had no authority to guarantee release of the prisoners.
Among those attacking the agreement were Liz Cheney a Republican representative from Wyoming who said: “I’ve expressed my serious concerns about the lack of verification mechanism, about the commitment and the agreement that we would go to zero and primarily about the fact that what we have here are a number of promises by the Taliban.Many of them are promises that have been made before, and I think that the decisions about American troop levels in Afghanistan have to be made based on America’s national security interests, not based on empty promises from the Taliban and an agreement that doesn’t have any disclosed verification mechanism.”
Taliban resumes attacks against the Afghan government
The peace deal presumed there would be talks between the Taliban and Afghans including members of the government to complete peace arrangement and a political way forward. However, with the Afghan government rejecting the prisoner swap, The Taliban considered the period of lessened violence to be over as far as attacks on the government were considered. Attacks resumed but only against the government. The US and Taliban forces kept to the agreement.
The Afghan government no doubt expected the US to come to its aid. Reports now indicate it has done so with an air attack.
However, in spite of all this, Trump said he had a good talk with the Taliban leader: “We had a very good conversation with the leader of the Taliban today, and they’re looking to get this ended, and we’re looking to get it ended. I think we all have a very common interest. We had, actually, a very good talk with the leader of the Taliban.” There is no indication that the talk had any practical positive effect at least so far.
