Daily Times

Today, Afghanistan is reasserting its identity as a land of perpetual conflict. Perhaps, the land where blood is cheaper than water. Compatriotism is contemptible in the face of one’s insular interests. The conflict refuses to relent.

On June 17, in the north of Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban attacked checkpoints in Jowzjan and Kunduz provinces and killed 18 Afghan security personnel. The Afghan government has estimated that, in recent weeks, the Taliban launched about 220 attacks that consumed the lives of 422 Afghan National Security Forces.

The tally is substantial if seen in the aftermath of the peace deal signed between the Taliban and the US authorities in Doha, Qatar, in February this year. The strength of the peace deal was the Taliban-US rapprochement, but the weakness of the deal was the conspicuous absence of representatives of the Afghan government. The absence or deliberate exclusion of the Kabul regime has spelt disaster for the country.

The Doha talks were considered the first round of peace deal paving the way for the second round of peace deal – this time between the Taliban and the Kabul government run by President Ashraf Ghani. The first round of peace deal ended hostility between the foreign forces and the Taliban by the agency of ceasefire, which remained selective in the application. In the meantime, both the local belligerent parties – the Taliban and the Kabul regime – had to smoothen out the field for reconciliation through prisoners’ swap, which is continued. After the swap is over, both sides would sit down to initiate negotiations for the second round of peace deal, which would take place between the Taliban and the Kabul government, after the success of which the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan would begin.

Through the prisoners’ swap, though the Taliban are inching towards their final goal of jettisoning all the foreign forces from Afghanistan, they have not spared their compatriots from shedding their blood. In the past three months, the loss of 422 Afghan security personnel has been an alarming figure, especially when the second round of peace talks is round the corner.

The US-Taliban peace deal has indicated two points. First, the Taliban may respect a peace agreement by not attacking the foreign forces. Second, the Taliban may not respect the Kabul regime, which was not part of the deal. During the peace talks in February, there was an emphasis on a ceasefire but that was with the foreign forces and not with the local forces. Perhaps, it was assumed that the Taliban would extend the facility of the ceasefire to Afghan security forces automatically, but this did not happen.

It seems that the Taliban view Afghanistan through a bifurcated lens. An Afghanistan run by the foreign (US-NATO) forces and the other Afghanistan governed by the local (Afghan) forces. Further, the Taliban are aware that they entered in a peace deal with the US and not with the Kabul regime. It means that half of hypothesised Afghanistan is experiencing peace whereas the other half is still on fire. The Taliban view the foreign forces and the Kabul regime as two separate entities trying to watch their interests in Afghanistan.

In the past three months, the loss of 422 Afghan security personnel has been an alarming figure, especially when the second round of peace talks is round the corner

The tyranny is that there is presently no direct line of communication between the Taliban and the Kabul regime. The Taliban consider the Kabul regime a puppet government waiting for the fall, once the foreign forces leave Afghanistan. This point is bound to cause the main hindrance in the path of the second round of negotiations for peace. After the Kabul regime, the next casualty would be the Afghan Constitution to materialise which the foreign players spent billions of dollars and hours of discussion. The ouster of the Kabul regime or the erosion of the Afghan Constitution along with the attendant democratic system would mean the failure of the Afghanistan project launched by the foreign players.

In the US, 2020 is a year of general elections. The incumbent US President Donald Trump is under pressure to withdraw or start withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan (under a road map) to show the American people that the President has delivered on his electoral promise. It is apparent now that the US presidential candidates make electoral pledges the fulfilment of which is near to impossible. In 2008, Barack Obama made one such electoral foreign policy promise, which was an expression of his ignorance to the ground realities. Afterwards, Obama could only reduce the number of troops to gain a semblance of delivery on his promise. Obama repeated the same mistake in 2012. Donald Trump is the next victim of the withdrawal fallacy.

On the one hand, the Kabul regime is under the pressure of survival against the Taliban attacks whereas, on the other hand, the subsequent US Presidents remain hell-bent upon withdrawing the American forces from Afghanistan. The obsession with withdrawal ebbs away the resolve of the Kabul regime, which is constrained to consider the Afghanistan project a fleeting dispensation. This is one of the reasons corruption is rampant in the rank and file of the Kabul regime, whereas the Taliban are relentless in showing their intent through blood-soaked attacks.

The first round of peace deal in Doha was a welcoming step by the Taliban because the cost of a ceasefire with the foreign forces was a guarantee for the release of 6000 Taliban prisoners from the custody of the Afghan security forces. For the US, it was a cakewalk. The real test of nerves, however, would take place in the second round of peace deal couched as intra-Afghan talks. Zalmay Khalilzad has exhorted Pakistan to play its role in driving the Taliban to the negotiation table.

The forthcoming intra-Afghan talks are bound to rife with two challenges: first, how to bring the Taliban round the point that they have to negotiate terms of peace for power-sharing with the Kabul regime, whether or not it is a puppet one; and second, how to make the Taliban accept the Afghan Constitution, whether or not it is an Islamic one.

Dr Tehmina Aslam Ranjha is an Assistant Professor at School of Integrated Social Sciences at University of Lahore and Research Fellow at UoL Center for Security, Strategy and Policy Research. Currently, she is SDPI’s grantee for a mega project on Countering Violent Extremism. She appears on BBC Urdu as an expert on National Security and Counter-Terrorism. She tweets at @TA_Ranjha.

Asad Aslam Ranjha is a lecturer at Faculty of Law, University of Lahore. He tweets at @AA_Ranjha1