US President Donald Trump tweeted announcing the cancellation of the Afghan peace talks and also informed that the Taliban and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani were due to secretly meet with the US President Trump last week at the famous Camp David retreat to formalize the peace deal. Zalmay Khalilzad, who had laboured over a year to craft the peace deal has been recalled to Washington DC, must be disappointed but so is Pakistan, which needs respite on its western front and the people of Afghanistan, who have borne the brunt of war, chaos and conflict for over four decades.
The immediate cause for the cancellation cited by Trump is the September 5th suicide attack in Kabul which killed US Sergeant First Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz, a Romanian Army Corporal and 10 Afghan civilians. The Taliban almost immediately claimed responsibility. There were already murmurs of dissent in the US administration regarding the terms of the peace accord. Some said it did not symbolize even a face-saving victory for the US and coming so close to the 9/11 anniversary, it would have left the surviving victims of the 2001 attack demoralized. The unceremonious exit of Trump’s Hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton is being presented as a case in point.
Camp David, which has been the venue for some very improbable peace deals, like the September 17, 1978 peace accord between Egypt and Israel, was likely to witness another dramatic peace agreement, which has been shelved for the time being.
Various rationales have been put forward for the abrupt termination of negotiations, but without going into conspiracy theories, let us examine the ground situation. Michael Kugelman, Deputy Director of the Asia program and South Asia Senior Associate at The Wilson Center does not think that talks are completely dead. He opines that “Trump is a savvy negotiator, and this may well be a ploy of sorts, meant to intimidate the Taliban and get it to scale down violence and come back to the negotiating table in a weaker position.”
A senior official in the Kabul government talking to The Daily Beast expects: “Sooner or later peace talks will start up again, but with a much different attitude. The Taliban really proved they don’t know the language of international diplomacy. The tone the Taliban are using with the Americans is like the tone they use when talking to the Afghans,” meaning the weak government. “The Taliban understanding of negotiations is very limited and blurry. They are expert in basic warrior language but have a very poor command of political or diplomatic vocabulary.”
In the opinion of this scribe, the Taliban too are shrewd negotiators and they have already told the US: “you may have the watches, but we have the time.” Indeed, time is not on Donald Trump’s side, who faces the prospects of a second Presidential term in less than two months. Withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan was one of his electoral promises in the 2016 elections but keeping promises is not a Trump forte!
With President Trump’s cancellation of the peace parleys, focus is back on President Ghani, who would like to see the Afghan elections take place on September 28, which had been postponed from July. It is time for President Ghani to rise to the occasion and try and win a second five-year term as president
One person, who was waiting patiently on the sidelines was the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who had been kept out of the Zalmay Khalilzad led talks at the insistence of the Taliban. With President Trump’s cancellation of the peace parleys, focus is back on President Ghani, who would like to see the Afghan elections take place on September 28, which had been postponed from July. It is time for President Ghani to rise to the occasion and try and win a second five-year term as president. The bigger question is would he prove equal to the task?
Ashraf Ghani’s previous outing at the polls in 2014 was so marred by fraud that a power-sharing deal with Abdullah Abdullah, his main competitor, had to be brokered by U.S. officials. Critical observers of the Afghan situation predict that the upcoming election will also be discredited. There have been accusations of Ghani using government funds and powers to enhance his chances of victory at the polls. He denies the charges, but he is also risking voters’ lives by pressing ahead with the vote despite threats of Taliban attacks that have forced 2,000 polling stations to remain closed. Ghani’s real challenge will be to face a rejuvenated Taliban, who now control more territory than ever before since 2001 and are in no mood of laying down arms unless a peace treaty is signed. The Afghan Taliban are dismissive of Ashraf Ghani deeming him to be a US pawn, while the former prove to be ruthless combatants as well as astute negotiators. Ghani invited Taliban leaders to talk to their fellow Afghans but warned they must stop killing first or face the wrath of the Afghan military. Unfortunately, he lacks credibility as the numerous deadly attacks including the September 5th assault depict the supremacy of the Taliban.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast, there are already talks of renegotiations for peace between the US and Afghan Taliban. May they bear fruition (Amen)!
The writer is a retired Group Captain of PAF. He is a columnist, analyst and TV talk show host